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Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the goals of tree disease related conservation efforts by questioning what makes their results 'culturally authentic'. In doing so, it outlines possible impacts of different ideas about cultural wellbeing on attempts to protect single species of tree and wider forest health.

Paper long abstract:

Dutch Elm Disease transformed elm from being a ubiquitous part of the UK landscape, to being largely absent. This landscape scale impact is something that is, to a certain extent, being replicated with ash trees due to Ash Dieback. There are ongoing projects responding to both diseases, three of which are the focus of my research:

• The loosely connected network of people breeding, trialing and selling disease-resistant elm

• Saving Devon's Treescapes - Wildlife Trust project planting other species in response to Ash Dieback

• Acts of memorialisation relating to both diseases

This paper is concerned with the goals of these conservation efforts, specifically - what is considered an appropriate proxy for absent tree species by the communities involved in these projects? My research is pre-data collection, so rather than presenting any data this paper will introduce the case studies at the center of my research and outline how different ideas about a tree's 'belonging' appear in each of them. Thinking about human wellbeing beyond physical health, I will focus on the cultural wellbeing of those who live and work with ash and elm trees and how it interplays with the health of that species and conceptions of a species' belonging. Following O'Gorman's call to see more-than-human belonging as 'never simply a question of biology or culture in isolation, but a terrain of contested biocultural meanings' (2014:285), I suggest that responses these diseases lie at the intersection of ideas about heritage, nostalgia, and ecological imperatives.