Many readers will have heard of the felling of the sycamore at Sycamore Gap on Hadrian's Wall this week. I walked by it earlier this year.
I am saddened by such a deliberate act of wanton vandalism.
it makes me think we should consciously value trees more. This is my offering from this morning. A whitebeam (I think, but I am no expert) in Blakeney, seen on the walk for a coffee after my first sighting of pink-footed geese this winter, which made early rising worthwhile.
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Thank you. I, together with thousands and thousands of others, loved that tree. Walking that stretch of the Wall will never be the same, even if, as is hoped, there may be shoots from the stump. Something to hope for, but never the same again.
Agreed.
As a developer I have an interesting relationship with trees.
If the trees are retained, we have to protect the roots and create a dig exclusion zone around it.
I pride myself on doing this properly as I work for the local authority. But many private developments I’ve seen, many tree roots are damaged and as a result trees either die, become unstable or they drop their limbs. There are simply not enough people to go out and check. The private sector get away with murder to be honest.
If I have to take high quality trees down, (and that is not very often) I’m expected to plant new ones which also involved managing them until they become mature and able to consolidate on their own.
In the town I work in however, tree/canopy coverage is poor which is a big worry given climate warming.
We should be planting trees as well as building houses.
Agreed
Some of us do plant trees.
In the village I live there is a field where lots of families have over the years planted trees and hedging plants which are then transplanted in their forever places eventually.
A hospice near here has a woodland area planted with trees in memory of loved ones who have died.
Every time someone I know dies, I have a new tree planted in the Woodland Trust wood nearest to where they live.
None of this makes me feel any less bereft at the chopping down of that ancient sycamore at Sycamore Gap.
All great ideas
What we really need to be doing on our uplands, and I realise that there are a lot of cultural issues around sheep farming is getting rid of the sheep and (in Scotland) Deer.
But left to her own devices nature will soon fill the space with trees as anyone who gardens can confirm
As a sheep farmer, but also someone who has planted over 2000 trees on land not suitable for grazing, I really cannot agree with your comment.
Getting rid of the deer, or bringing back the wolves? Both valid options!
I agree that if we valued trees more the felling of the Sycamore would have been less likely to happen, and maybe wouldn’t have happened at all.
People who allow livestock to eat tree seedlings need to have their financial incentives to do so stopped.
Is it just me or is the name you’ve used very offensive Mr Hunt?
He is now banned
Living in Sheffield, we know all too well the personal and corporate (councillors’) potential for folly, dinosaur thinking and so on, regarding vital urban trees. But it’s strange (or is it?) that there’s such a focus on one, iconic tree. The bigger picture is worse: 800 million trees felled in six years, to satisfy our desire for beef. https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/02/more-than-800m-amazon-trees-felled-in-six-years-to-meet-beef-demand
The Sheffield Park Ranger, who works alongside my local Wildlife Nature Group, advises we should plant the right tree in the right place. We’e lost so many different habitats in the last 50 years, which has led to the loss of species? Nature is incredibly resilient if we give it a hand, even in what seemed unlikely places, such as inner city urban parkland that was mown to an inch of its life. The Ponderosa Nature Group, has now logged over 300 different species and we are begining to see raptors flying above the park and around the Council’s Tower blocks.
Our group has had grants from Council to sink a pond, help establish wildflower meadows, buy fruit trees, build a raised bed for vegetables and bird boxes. It is a challenge to get Council Parks, Housing and Education Departments (let alone Highways) to work together but, given the political will, it is possible. The Partnerships set up with The Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust, the University Landscape Deartment and over 100 local volunteer, ‘ Friends of Green Spaces’ Groups is very encouraging.
The Sheffield Council’s Street Tree disaster, has made the City very aware of incidents like the vandalism of The Sychamore Gap. With large parts of the City within the boundaries of a National Park the lessons learned must be consolidated.
With a major UK-wide Wildlife Conference taking place in Sheffield in 2024 we are excited that we can foster a step change in responding to the Biodiversity Emergency.
Thanks
Have you seen any Great White Egrets? We have 3 currently in RSPB Weymouth. A Grey Heron had a fight with one of them. The warming planet is changing the birds habits.
Only little egrets so far here
But saw great white near home last week
There is a mechanism in place to protect trees, a Tree Preservation Order. A friend is an orchardist, and he liaises closely with the council’s planning officer to use them judiciously in development projects. But I really don’t know how effective TPOs are in practise, or how widely they’re used. Dozens of ancient woodlands have been destroyed for the HS2 project, maybe an ecocide law to provide protection by default?
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tree-preservation-orders-and-trees-in-conservation-areas
People say ‘it’s only one tree’ and lament how many others have been felled for (for example) HS2.
But it’s one specific tree in a unique position. If you use that line of thinking you could diminish almost every crime. Would the murder of a person with no kids be better than one with seven children to be orphaned?
This was a particular act of thoughtless vandalism that transcends so much. HS2 can claim they had permission. This youth and the man also arrested certainly didn’t but had to have made detailed plans to go and fell the tree.
It’s more than ‘just one tree’. It has hit a nerve in the way felling of forests for paper, railway lines, land clearance for building etc could never do.
It has echoes of Peter Shaffer’s play Equus, in which a boy blinds a horse and a psychiatrist tries to find out what really motivated him. What kind of ‘power’ did this give them?
That last point is key to answering the question, why?
My own feeling is that those responsible may have felt some sense of power in the reflected outrage by those in authority and those who feel helpless to have prevented this.
I think magistrates (if guilt is proven) should order this youth, and any accomplice(s) who may have lent him the chain saw or helped, to do community service in planting 1,000 trees.
Please remember that no-one has been charged with this offence, and assuming the crime was carried out by a ‘youth’ is not appropriate.
True
Two people have been arrested
They are nit guilty
But let’s also be clear, someone is
They should be asked to plant trees under supervision, but they should be kept well away from Hadrian’s Wall.
The felling of the sycamore is symptomatic of a deeply dysfunctional society that is continuing to erode before our very eyes.
Evil, lunatic, moron….the labels that the enraged among us will throw at the individual responsible may slake our visceral reaction but will not get us much further forward in our understanding.
Research has shown that a very high percentage of violent crime is perpetrated by individuals from damaged backgrounds and violent crime is just further along the spectrum from felling a treasured tree. While it is currently fashionable to ‘victim blame’ it is the structure of our society that is predominantly at fault.
The work that you do Richard in trying to bring about a just and fair society is so crucially important and deserves to, and will, be supported by as many right minded people as we can get it exposed to.
Thanks
Not far north from where we live on the peninsula near the coast in SW Ireland is a fantastic example of rewinding an old Atlantic rainforest. ( Here, we are geographically a Temperate Rainforest! Who would have thought…)
Really amazing account written in the book “An Irish Atlantic Forest” written by them man who had the vision Eoghan Dalton.
That could be done in Wales as well
Both are naturally temperate rain forest
I live in a rural part of East Kent. A couple of years back a young couple moved in to a nearby property that has a few acres and (did have) a beautiful old Yew tree. They chopped it down. The husband happened to come up to my property one day, looking for a bit of history to the area and of his property in particular. I raised the issue of the yew tree to which he replied that they had cut it down because “it was a risk to their horses”. He had no concept of stewardship or guardianship – only of ownership. It was “his land” and he could do with as he wished. He was a little chastened when I said that the yew had probably been at least 300 years old and had seen countless generations come and go. But I doubt the feeling stayed with him for very long, although the gap that it has left in the hedgerow has brought me close to tears on several occasions since.
Just so sad.