Forestry Commission Wales has stepped up efforts to fight a deadly tree disease by making an extra £100,000 of grant money available.
The funding is available to woodland owners in the Dyfi valley area, Powys to help combat Phytophthora ramorum and Phytophthora kernoviae, two serious fungus-like diseases that pose a threat to woodlands.
The Dyfi valley has been selected for this grant money as an outbreak of P. ramorum was discovered there in 2009. P. ramorum has caused sudden oak death in California.
Rhododendron ponticum is one of the plants that hosts these diseases and the new funding is for the removal of uninfected rhododendron in a specific control zone in the Dyfi valley.
The funding is available via Forestry Commission Wales’s Better Woodlands for Wales grant scheme. Applications must be made using one of the trained management planners approved by the scheme and claims must be submitted by 28 February 2011.
As well as making this extra funding available, Forestry Commission Wales is working in partnership with the Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA) to locate infected rhododendron and to remove them.
For more details on the funding and to check the area covered, please contact Forestry Commission Wales on 0300 068 0300 or www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/infd-5z8jcr
