Tree disease and pest epidemics in the Anthropocene: A review of the drivers, impacts and policy responses in the UK

The growing incidence of new tree pest and disease epidemics, many of them with the potential to radically reshape our native woodlands and forests, is closely linked to a significant upsurge in global trade and transportation in recent decades. At the same time, interventions designed to actually manage any pest and disease outbreaks that occur can reshape forest landscapes in a variety of ways. In this review-based paper we argue that disease-driven interactions between biology, public policy and human agency along pathways of introduction and at outbreak sites will become increasingly common in the Anthropocene, where the latter is understood as an era in which human influence over non-human nature is ever more pervasive. We discuss the nature of these interactions in terms of the increased risk of disease introduction via various trade pathways and through the subsequent policy and behavioural responses to two disease outbreaks made by policymakers and stakeholders in the UK (Phytophthora ramorum and ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus)). Human influence is evident both in terms of the underlying risk drivers and in the subsequent course and management of these and other outbreaks.