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Medical News
Environment
6 May 2019
Ash dieback will be costly to the environment and the economyDescription:David Mark / Alamy Stock Photo
By Adam VaughanThe death of virtually all Britain’s ash trees due to a fungal disease will cost more than just lost habitats for wildlife and treasured woods for recreation. A new estimate of the economic cost of ash dieback, a fungal disease that arrived in the UK in 2012, puts the price tag at £14.8 billion.
That’s about three times as much as estimates for the Dutch elm disease crisis in the 1960s and 70s, largely because there are far …