[Closed] Horse chestnut (conker trees) on extinction list in Europe.

I've noticed a shocking increase in the number of local ash trees with die back this year.

One way to help horse chestnut trees would be for all the fallen leaves to be swept up and burned, which would kill the moth larvae that winter over in the debris.
Whilst this would be impractical nationally, controlling the spread in local and urban areas would help a great deal, trees in council-owned parks and grounds could easily have their fallen leaves cleared and destroyed, and privately owned areas could do the same.
It’s much easier to control than a disease like Dutch Elm, which is spread by a bark-boring beetle.

We're fortunate enough to have a small horse chestnut tree in the back garden. I'd guess it's about 15ft tall?

I'll make a point of clearing the leaves this year.

The horse chestnut isn't native to the UK, its only been around for a few hundred years.
Trees will come and go. They could be replaced by other trees better adapted to the environment.

One of my favourite trees, one of the first to come into leaf and then one of the first to turn colour in autumn. And what colours. Sad.

There's half a million of them in the UK like. I'm a tree-hugger myself, and we should absolutely protect these majestic trees, but I reckon 'risk of extinction' might be an overly broad definition in this case.

The number of mature elms in the UK is in the 100s, by contrast, although the population of young elms is healthy - more than there were prior to Dutch Elm Disease by some estimates.

Change your search engine and get trees planted

The horse chestnut isn’t native to the UK, its only been around for a few hundred years.
Trees will come and go. They could be replaced by other trees better adapted to the environment.

The study was of all native European trees, of which 42% of over 400 species are threatened with extinction. The greatest threat is logging and agriculture. It’s not so much that the trees need to ‘adapt’ to a changing environment, it’s us that need to plant more trees and manage out footprint responsibly. The saddest thing to me is that with mature woodlands being lost we also lose our biodiversity and ‘green corridors’. Woodland ecosystems aren’t like software that we can just update every few months/years :/

There's one benefit of the current political ****show in that it will discourage forestry nurseries and plantations from importing seed and stock from the EU, which will help prevent the introduction of pests and diseases. Once these gain access to our environment there's little chance of preventing their spread, never mind eradicating them. Few of us consider washing our bikes after a ride never mind our car, clothes or the dog after a walk. We do work on breeding disease resistant stock but as it can take around a decade for trees to mature this is a slower process than the spread of the disease or pest, the alternatives can often be as detrimental to the environment.
The Woodland Trust does some really good work in protecting ancient woodlands against projects such as the Hs2, they are also intending to create a northern forest which will stretch from Lancashire to Northumberland by planting 50,000,000 trees. Even agencies and the 3rd sector such as SUSTRANS replant as part of their projects (grants are available). Although last year England missed its target by a whopping 71%, Scotland planted 22,000,000 in the same year. Estates such as Glen Feshie are moving away from Sitka Spruce plantations and grouse moors towards planting a mix of native species, although it's still a commercial woodland they are worked in a more traditional and environmentally friendly way by harvesting a mix of produce from coppicing and felling as well as collecting the mix of fruit and nuts.