THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) July 17

Trees that never flower herald a silent spring

Oliver Tickell and Charles Clover report that GM forests will be devoid of all animal and insect life

By OLIVER TICKELL AND CHARLES CLOVER

"TERMINATOR" trees, genetically engineered never to flower, could ensure a silent spring in the forests of the future. Such trees will grow faster than before, but will be devoid of the bees, butterflies, moths, birds and squirrels which depend on pollen, seed and nectar, scientists said yesterday.

Under plans set out by the biotechnology company Monsanto and New Zealand's Forest Research Agency, the sterile plantations will be engineered to secrete toxic chemicals through their leaves to kill caterpillars and other leaf-eating insects and to resist herbicides, allowing ground flora to be eliminated easily. Scientists from companies and regulatory bodies, such as English Nature, agree that before GM trees can be allowed to grow in the open, they must be made sterile to prevent the contamination of wild species with modified DNA. But environmental groups believe that sterile trees will bring a second "silent spring". The first, in Rachel Carson's book of that name, described the advent of synthetic pesticides, such as DDT.

Scientists meeting at the Oxford University Museum this week for an international symposium sponsored by Shell and Monsanto are working on improving the value of trees, by making them grow faster or by producing lignin-free timber to reduce the use of chemicals and energy used in paper-making. They claim that GM trees will have benefits. David Duncan of Monsanto said: "Increasing the productivity of tree plantations safely and sustainably will help meet the world's wood needs without increasing pressure on native forests. "

Dr Amy Brunner of Oregon State University is working on ways to prevent flowering in black cottonwood and is being sponsored by interested companies, including Shell and Monsanto, and the US Department of Energy. She said: "You could argue that non- flowering trees would limit wildlife, but these trees are intended only for specialised plantations. We do not want them to replace native forests, but to be planted on bare marginal land of no agricultural value."

Dr Jeff Skinner, also of Oregon State University, said that exotic trees could be prevented from growing in places where they did not belong. His work, also on black cottonwood, involves attaching a poison-promoting gene to a "promoter" gene responsible for stimulating flowering so that every time a flower cell began to form it poisoned itself and died.

But ecologists are horrified. George McGavin, curator of Entomology at Oxford University Museum, said: "If you replace vast tracts of natural forest with flowerless trees there will be a serious effect on the richness and abundance of insects.

"If you put insect resistance in the leaves as well you will end up with nothing but booklice and earwigs. We are talking about vast tracts of land covered with plants that do not support animal life as a sterile means of culturing wood tissue. That is a pretty unattractive vision of the future and one I want no part of."

Friends of the Earth says that scientists will have little power to determine how their technology is applied in practice.

Sarah Tyack, of Friends of the Earth, said: "The idea that intensively-managed plantations take pressure off natural forests is a myth. What is happening is that natural forest is being cleared to make way for intensive plantations. GM trees will accelerate that process." Hanna Scrase, of the Forestry Stewardship Council, the leading global certification body, said: "Our position is simple. We do not allow GM trees."

Martin Mathers of the World Wide Fund for Nature said: "These trees will support even lower levels of biodiversity than conifer monocultures. At least Sitka spruce has nectar and cones that support insects, red squirrels, cross-bills and other birds."

The private forestry industry is also uneasy about GM trees. Len Yull, chairman of the Timber Growers' Association, said: "I have yet to see anyone put a convincing case that GM technology would create a sufficiently superior product to achieve a real market advantage, and these things are market and profit driven."