United to save our plants
ANEW biosecurity strategy was announced by Defra last week, in a bid to ‘protect native species and drive economic growth’. The plan, created in partnership with the Forestry Commission and the Scottish and Welsh Governments, sets out a five-year vision for plant health, with a focus on monitoring online retailers and social-media sites to prevent the importation and trade of high-risk plant products. The strategy sets out how more than 30 signatories, such as the NFU, the RHS and the Woodland Trust, will deliver ‘an ambitious programme of behavioural change across society through public engagement’.
The new scheme builds on the work of the previous biosecurity strategy, which was created in 2014 in response to the outbreak of ash dieback. ‘That strategy put in place lots of tools, approaches, processes, investment and capabilities that allowed us to respond much better to new and emerging threats,’ says Nicola Spence, the UK’s chief plant health officer. The new strategy will focus on three key areas, Dr Spence notes: focusing more resource towards online trading, developing a voluntary certification scheme and making the public aware of what biosecurity means and what people can do to help.
‘This new strategy builds on what we’ve developed and provides more
