Ash dieback: number of affected counties doubles Defra has confirmed outbreaks of the deadly tree disease in the wild in six new counties. The number of English counties suffering outbreaks of a deadly tree disease in the wild has more than doubled, the government said on Wednesday. As forestry and plant health experts met at a summit convened by the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced that ash dieback had been confirmed in the wild in six new counties: Berkshire, Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Sussex and Yorkshire. The findings add to the discovery of ash affected by the fungus, Chalara fraxinea, in Essex and Kent on Monday, bringing the total number of counties where it is found in the "wider environment" to 10. A total of 115 sites have been confirmed now, with the number in forests and woodlands (61) now outnumbering those in nurseries and recent plantings. Martin Ward, Defra chief plant health officer, said that 92% of England, Scotland and Wales's woodland had been surveyed for the disease so far. "We have thrown all possible resources at this surveying exercise which has given us a much clearer picture of the distribution of the disease to inform our evidence base," he said. A Defra spokeswoman told the Guardian: "The discovery of the disease in these counties does not mean the disease is spreading rapidly. It is likely that the disease has been present in these areas for a number of years, originally caused by spores blown in from mainland Europe."The disease is also known to have come in via imports, with the first cases in the UK found in February at a Buckinghamshire nursery which had imported 2,000 ash trees from the Netherlands. An import ban was imposed on 29 October. Wednesday's findings appear to confirm efforts by a photographic mapping exercise, which the Guardian reported on Tuesday as showing the spread of ash dieback was worse than feared. One expert, Glynn Percival of the University of Reading, said that it was too late to contain the spread of the disease, which has affected 90% of Denmark's ash. I hate to be pessimistic but we're now at a stage where we are beyond containment and eradication. We're now looking at management. The current management is removal of trees and destroying them," he told the Today programme.