Sycamore Gap felling leads to calls for special tree heritage status | UK News

In 2014, the Woodland Trust asked the people of England, Scotland and Wales to name their favourite tree.

It was an idea the conservation charity had borrowed from the Europe-wide Tree of the Year competition that had started three years earlier, intending to throw a bit of attention on the most special trees in the British Isles.

Beyond that, there was no real need for more precise criteria. Certain trees become people’s favourites for lots of reasons: they’re exceptionally beautiful, they’re exceptionally old, or they have an interesting story to tell. In a particularly charming example, the winner of Scotland’s Tree of the Year in 2016 was the Ding Dong Tree, named for a game played around it by children at Prestonpans Primary School where it stands in the playground.

That same year, the 300-year-old Sycamore Gap tree in Northumberland was announced as England’s winner of the title. It had become a local landmark for good reason, standing tall in the centre of the dip between two near-symmetrical slopes. Its beauty led to it becoming one of the most photographed trees in the country, and to its appearance in the 1991 Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

But on Thursday morning, Northumbrians woke up to find somebody had inexplicably taken a chainsaw to the sycamore, leaving only a clean stump and a trunk – still fully in leaf a few weeks before it would have turned a blazing orange – horizontal against Hadrian’s Wall.

A 16-year-old boy and a man in his sixties have both been arrested. The motive, if there is one, has yet to be established. Regardless of why the felling was done, the shock, heartbreak and indignation expressed by locals has been reminiscent of the reaction to the destruction of the Crooked House pub in the Black Country earlier this year – only more profound. A tree cannot be rebuilt brick by brick. It’s a unique living organism, and once it’s killed, it isn’t coming back.

‘You’ve just murdered a sentinel of time and elemental spirit of Northumberland,’ said TV presenter Si King in a social media video directed at the anonymous logger, ‘And I hope you feel really good about yourself.’

In the meantime, the loss of the Sycamore Gap tree has demonstrated how vulnerable our favourite trees are. England picked seven Trees of the Year between 2014 and 2020, when the individual national competitions were merged into a single one for the whole UK. As of Thursday morning, only four of those seven are still standing.

The 2015 winner was the 250-year-old Cubbington Pear Tree in Warwickshire, thought to be the oldest wild pear tree in the country. Despite its grand age, it kept blossoming and bearing fruit until it was felled on October 20 2020 to make way for the High Speed 2 rail line. HS2 Ltd, the company behind the project, said more than 40 new saplings would be planted using cuttings taken from the Cubbington tree.

A similar fate met the the Happy Man Tree, a London plane which stood beside Seven Sisters Road in Hackney and was named champion in 2020. On January 5 the following year, police cleared away protestors so the tree could be removed as part of Berkeley Homes’ Woodberry Down Estate regeneration project.

‘It’s a desperately sad moment, and just totally unneccessary. It just didn’t need to happen,’ campaigner Peter Buckingham told the Hackney Citizen.

Both the Happy Man Tree and the Cubbington Pear Tree were nominated partially because they were under threat from their respective developments, and the Sycamore Gap tree is the first title-winner to be chopped down illegally. But the loss of all three has bolstered calls for the UK’s landmark plant life to be given the kind of legal protection enjoyed by landmark buildings.

A YouGov poll cited by the Woodland Trust’s Living Legends campaign found 83% of people in Britain support giving ancient trees legal heritage status, while 85% thought national government and its agencies should be responsible for protecting them.

‘We must, as a nation, continue to fight for better legal protection for our oldest most important trees,’ said Jack Taylor, lead campaigner at the Trust. ‘At present they have no or little legal protection, unlike our built environment.’

The organisation highlighted the 550-year-old Darwin’s Oak near Shrewsbury, which is at risk from the Shropshire town’s north-west relief road plans, and the nine veteran trees that face the chop to make way for the Lower Thames Crossing downstream from the Dartford Crossing in Kent.

Currently, specific trees or woodland can be protected by the enforcement of a Tree Preservation Order (TPO), which are typically made by a local planning authority. Anyone looking to fell a tree that is protected by a TPO must submit an application to the council – if they go ahead without permission being granted, they can be fined up to £20,000.

Even with permission, the landowner has to replace any felled tree with a TPO with one of an appropriate size and species in the same place, as soon as possible.That replacement tree automatically gets its own TPO. However, it can take decades for a newly planted tree to provide the same environmental benefits as an old one that was removed.

On Friday morning, the National Trust said the healthy stump of the Sycamore Gap tree may yet produce life through an ancient technique called coppicing, which would allow new shoots to grow from its base.

The body’s general manager Andrew Poad told BBC Breakfast: ‘It’s a very healthy tree, we can see that now, because of the condition of the stump, it may well regrow a coppice from the stump, and if we could nurture that then that might be one of the best outcomes, and then we keep the tree.’

But the wait for the beloved tree to return to its former glory will be far longer than the lifetimes of anyone alive today.

‘This tree was known and loved by so many people across the world, and the outpouring of love and grief the Woodland Trust has seen has been immense,’ said Jack Taylor.

‘Trees store carbon and are home to valuable wildlife, but they also hold the memories of people. It is a truly irreplaceable loss.’

The 2023 Tree of the Year nominees

This year, the competition is celebrating urban trees that provide some green beauty in British cities.

Greenwich Park sweet chestnut, London

A gnarled 360-year-old sweet chestnut planted at the request of King Charles II.

Holm oak blitz tree, Exeter, Devon

An oak that survived a World War Two air raid that extensively damaged its neighbouring church.

Cathedral foxglove tree, Lichfield, Staffordshire

A beautiful city landmark that stands in the Remembrance Garden.

Lakeside holm oak, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire

A distinctively sprawling tree in Jephson Gardens.

Crouch Oak, Addlestone, Surrey

An 800-year-old oak said to have sheltered Elizabeth I as she had a picnic.

Manchester poplar, Manchester

A black poplar that survived the coal-burning factory pollution of the city’s industrial boom.

Grantham Oak, Grantham, Lincolnshire

An oak that has stood for more than 500 years, and may remain from the agricultural land on which Grantham was built.

Chelsea Road elm, Sheffield, South Yorkshire

One of fewer than 1,000 elms still standing in the UK, this one was saved by locals after a rare white-letter hairstreak butterfly was seen laying eggs on it.

Plymouth pear, Plymouth, Devon

A member of the only tree species protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

Sweet chestnut, Acton Park, Wrexham

A 484-year-old tree that is beloved by locals for its history and beauty.

Highland Gateway walnut, Perth

An enormous walnut which provides precious shade to people parking their cars at the Inveralmond Retail Park.

Belvoir Oak, Belfast

At more than half a millennium old, possibly the oldest surviving tree in Northern Ireland

Library holm oak, Westbury, Wiltshire

A popular place to relax with a book and the sole public nominee on the list.

You can vote at this link until October 15, and the winner will be announced on October 19.

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