We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use forestresearch.gov.uk, remember your settings and improve our services.
We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.
The term 'biosecurity' refers to the measures which can be taken to prevent or minimise the spread of pests and diseases.
When operations are taking place in woodlands confirmed as having either Phytophthora ramorum and/or P. kernoviae infection, biosecurity best practice includes general plant hygiene precautions, as well as some specialist measures. This applies to all potentially damaging pests and diseases.
The following are the minimum measures which will help to minimise the spread of phytophthora diseases – or any other plant diseases – from infected woods and forests.
More-detailed guidance for those working on forestry operations at affected sites, and for woodland agents and advisors inspecting woodlands and forests, is provided in the following documents.
A Forestry Commission movement licence will be required if timber is to be removed from felling sites affected by ramorum disease. See Section 9: Licences to move and process wood from trees affected by ramorum disease.
Good biosecurity practice includes the use of disinfectant where appropriate.
Propellar and Cleankill Sanitising Spray are known to be effective against phytophthoras and other harmful tree and plant pathogens. Generic Control of Substances Harmful to Health (COSHH) assessments and safety data sheets have been carried out for both products.
The least hazardous option should always be selected unless there are very good reasons to do otherwise. In this case the COSHH assessments show that Cleankill Sanitising Spray has lower volatility, flammability and toxicity, and therefore poses the lower risk.
Only the Cleankill product 'Sanitising Spray’ has been tested and found to be effective against P. ramorum. The disinfectant marketed simply as ‘Cleankill’, which is commonly used as an animal health disinfectant, should not be used as an alternative.
We strongly advise managers of sites where larch trees have been felled or chemically killed to take account of the risk of future infection of the site by Heterobasidion annosum fungus. This fungus can take advantage of the decaying stumps or killed trees to colonise the site, and make it difficult to re-establish a healthy crop of conifer trees. See Section 6: Managing the risk from Heterobasidion annosum fungus on felled larch sites.
Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to store information about how you use the dwi.gov.uk website, such as the pages you visit.
Find out more about cookies on forestresearch.gov.uk
We use 3 types of cookie. You can choose which cookies you're happy for us to use.
These essential cookies do things like remember your progress through a form. They always need to be on.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about: how you got to the site the pages you visit on forestresearch.gov.uk and how long you spend on each page what you click on while you're visiting the site
Some forestresearch.gov.uk pages may contain content from other sites, like YouTube or Flickr, which may set their own cookies. These sites are sometimes called ‘third party’ services. This tells us how many people are seeing the content and whether it’s useful.