'Elimination' predicted for ash trees

Have just checked with DH and actually it was a ranger at Windsor Great Park that told him that cows were eating the bark of old oaks which they had always left alone before. It started after the pasture in the parkland was changed to just grasses rather than more varied herbage.

I think we probably agree about what counts as improvements and what doesn't, jura.

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DH has told me a few times about some research he knew about where cows started eating the bark of trees that had been in the pasture fields for generations and which they'd never touched before. It turned out, as I think you were implying, that because the fodder in the fields had been so-called improved, theywere not getting the vsriety of thr nutrients they needed from the pasture whereas they had in the oast when the pasture contained a variety of flowering plants other than grasses, and probably several species if grass, not a monoculture.

So if you were supposing, jura, that that's the sort of "improvement I was talking about, you were mistaken in that supposition. I was not.

Sorry, jura, but I'm not sure I understand your last post. I wasn't talking about so-called improvements that aren't really improvements at all, of that's what you're referring to. I was talking about real improvements.

Also, speak for yourself about being cut off from nature. You don't speak for me on that. Some people may be cut off from nature but many are not. Perhaps you'd like to tell people who still have to shit in the woods, so to speak (as well as literally in some cases) that they are cut off from nature?

Grass needs a few bushes though.

Yes indeed. No need for that sort of language.

You might want to keep your furry under wraps.

Your post Thatbags reminds me of my furry whenever I come across the word 'improved grassland' IMPROVED my

Where 1000s of flowers grew and provided wonderful fodder and food for the bees- nothing but uniform universal green- improved ****** NO

We WERE part of nature- but have now defintely CUT OURSELVES OFF from it, one way or another.

I live in limestone country and ashtrees, and if they do die and go, I for one will certainly miss them (well perhpas not the 1000s of seedlings I have to pull out of the veg plot of the borders.... but)

I knew before found need to say it twice thatbags, I cannot dismiss nature as indifferent ,I don't agree with you, nature gets cocked by man

But - if we want to ensure the survival of mankind we have to ensure that certain species do not die out; we are inter-dependent.

I guess most people simply don't know what I've now said twice on this thread about the fact that the species now alive on Earth are a very tiny fraction of species that have ever existed.

Yes, I think we do understand; survival of the fittest (although we still do not know for certain what wiped out the dinosaurs), otherwise we would not be the only human species still on the planet (although, of course, those of us out of Africa do carry Neanderthal DNA).

Are there any new tree species developing that will take over when our present ones are decimated?

I think it's worth mentioning at this point that it is part of our nature to try and improve things for ourselves and our fellow humans, not to just accept what Nature throws at us in a fatalistic way. If that means trying to alleviate the suffering of starving people, then I'm not ashamed to call that a good thing to do and I'm all for interfering with the course of completely indifferent Nature.

We are part of Nature, not separate from it. We have evolved to be what we are as part of the nature around us.

I'm must have missed that, triciaf. That human beings are improving things both for their fellow men and for their environment is not something pessimists, alarmists and misery-chops want to hear, I suppose. I highly recommend Max Roser's site ourworldindata.org if you want a more positive picture of humanity and the world in general.

He's an Oxford based statistician.

thatbags -I posted something like you just wrote about the decline in the human population last year sometime, and was told off by a few people.
I think it was on a thread about immigrants - something I'd read, about sending out aid to famine affected countries, interfering with the course of Nature.

Mine too, pompa. I have spent my gardening energies over the last seventeen years encouraging native, wild plants and flowers in my garden. I actually prefer wild flowers to many over-blowsy cultivated ones.

I already knew of course that a lot of people, including David Attenborough, think human beings are a plague on the planet. I went off him a bit when he made that clear.

I live in hope that as living conditions for the poorest human beings improve, birth rates will fall and the total human population will gradually level off, as it already has begun to do all over the world. C/f ourworldindata.org

It's a kind of humanism, not what most people understand by humanism, but a certain positivity about the human species. In short I'm an optimist

Anniebach, yes you are wasting your money on plants for bees & butterflys (or is that butterflies ??). Just plant nettles, they are free, and easy to grow. It's us humans that prefer the pretty flowers. at least that's my excuse for a weedy garden.

I think I'm beginning to understand why people seem to me to be a little hysterical when someone like me takes the possible extinction of one species in her stride. (Please note the important word 'possible'). I guess most people simply don't know what I've now said twice on this thread about the fact that the species now alive on Earth are a very tiny fraction of species that have ever existed.

thatbags the only species that seems to be overcrowding the planet is humankind.
Although insect populations could increase with a rise in temperature.

We may be a dominant species at the moment but we won't be forever. We've only been around for a miniscule amount of time so far, a few thousand years compared to the millions when dinosaurs were the dominant ones.

Anniebach well I was trying to be polite
Facetious? (hastily looks up meaning)

anya, I understand, as I said before, that something like 99% of all species that have ever lived on this planet are now extinct so it does seem quite likely that extinction is part of the natural order of things as environments change and as evolution, for whatever reason, occurs.

Jalima, sarcasm ?

Anniebach Jalima, no idea what word describes my post on planting for the bees and butterflies
I don't think I used the right word and am struggling to find it, but I know what you meant by your post.

I did wonder whether I should have gone and rescued some of the ash keys when the tree next door was chopped down, but they could have been carrying the disease too.

I realise that everything evolves - otherwise we wouldn't be here - but if we can use our knowledge to save a species becoming extinct surely we should try to do so. Especially trees, the lungs of the earth.