"Phytophthora ramorum is a significant economic problem," said a UK Forest Products Association (UKFPA) spokesperson.
"We’ve been fortunate so far that the UK market has absorbed all the larch that came forward but Wales is still a hot spot and now south-west Scotland is affected."
As well as impacting the market, an increase in infection would raise questions over the harvesting resource. "The contracting sector is going to come under increasing pressure," he said.
And in some respects, he added, the UK is dealing with the unknown. "Larch hasn’t been affected by Phytophthora in other countries so there are no case histories to follow. We’re still learning about the disease."
Meanwhile, dothistroma, or redband needle blight, is causing problems in north-east Scotland’s pine forests. "There is going to be a lot more pine coming onto the market," said the UKFPA. "And that presents other practical issues because processing pine is very much a seasonal thing because of the risk of discolouration."
"It’s starting to make everyone think seriously about what sort of felling regime we put in place to try and contain the spread and what impact it is going to have on the market," said a Confor spokesperson.
As a result, the Forestry Commission (FC) has set up the Tree Health Timber Marketing Group. The group, which will include the FC, private growers, sawmills and harvesting businesses, will produce a report by next spring looking at the scale of the threat from diseased timber and how it can be handled in terms of marketing.
"It will also look at the longer-term availability of softwood," said Confor’s spokesperson. "The recent national forestry inventory forecast of availability for the next 25 years shows that we have more trees and more wood to work with than we previously thought. But we stopped planting trees in the late 1980s and early 1990s and haven’t really got going again so we’re going to have a dip in supply from 2040-2060.
"We need to increase planting and also look at tree species, thinning regimes and what age we harvest timber to see if there is a combination of activities that will increase the availability of wood so that the processing sector has greater confidence over a continued level of annual supply."
Meanwhile England’s forest estate would seem to be on safer ground. The recently-published report by the Independent Panel on Forestry has been very well received.
"It’s an extremely comprehensive, well-rounded and well thought out document," said UKFPA’s spokesperson.
"Hopefully it conveys the point that there is an important link between the forest, the wood-using sector and the markets for wood," said Confor. "If we have an interest in the environment, the economy and rural employment, then we should be looking at forests as a real asset that can be utilised as part of a low carbon industry."
The report is now with Defra, which will consider its 31 different recommendations and respond formally in January.
"We’d like them to go for all 31 recommendations," said the UKFPA, "but the first challenge is to decouple forestry, with its long-term time scales, from the five-year political time scales. "We have to ensure that this report has a life beyond the current government so there has to be all-party support for this – and we all have a duty to try to achieve that."
