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Famous Sycamore Gap tree on Hadrian's Wall had been deliberately cut down

I can totally see it as being a sick protest against climate change. "See what's going to happen if we don't get it together?!"
 
Periodic cutting greatly extends the life of most trees, so that coppiced stools may be many hundreds of years old.
 
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A man in Texas poisoned an ancient tree in the town square to death, out of some deranged impulse to impress or condemn the object of his affections (I forget now the exact nature of his "reasoning"). The woman he had in mind was by all accounts unaware of his interest in her, and of the arboricide plot he directed at her.
 
What exactly do you do in this kind of situation? Find another mature tree and transplant it? Plant another young tree? Leave the stump and a placard describing what happened and what used to be there?

A historical landmark like this isn't really replaceable, this is a huge bummer.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
I wonder if this is going to turn out to be a simple, yet blunderous, screw up. Imagine being an arborist with a normal work order to cut down a tree, end up going to the wrong tree, and this is the news you wake up to the next day :jaw-dropp
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Just to re-inforce what Andy said already: you don't get to Sycamore Gap by accident, especially if you are lugging a chain saw large enough to take out that tree. You get there even less by accident in the middle of the night in 40-50mph winds, like what we had here last night. And you can't mistake it for another tree, as there aren't any (IIRC, the nearest is a bunch of conifers as a wind break by a farm house a bit further along the Wall).

As deliberate as a deliberate thing done on purpose with clear intent.
 
From a rational perspective, the tree being cut down seems to minor...we've got wars going on. We've had terrible deaths due to covid. We've got so many horrible, crazy, things spiraling out of control that it seems silly to be bothered about a tree.

But those things are all so big, so hard to manage. We've always had war and disease and its hard to even imagine how we might end war and disease. Something small like this is so petty, so pointlessly cruel. We are saddened that terrible things to happen to people, but we take joy that objects of natural beauty will last and be there for the future.

So...is this actually a topic that everyone on ISF is actually in agreement about? Nobody's going to start explaining why it was such a good thing that the tree was cut down? That seems almost miraculous!
 
I'd really like to know why. What's to gain? Notoriety?

Also, I know nothing about tries, save how to climb them, but is there no way to save it? Trees often seem remarkably resilient, pushing out new roots when apparently completely dead? (I suspect I'm clutching at straws here)
 
What strikes me is yesterday's tragic UK news story was a 15 year old girl stabbed to death on the way to school by a teenage boy. Today's is a tree killed by a teenage boy.

In the abstract, it's no contest. If the thing George Washington was remembered for being unable to lie about was murdering a girl, he would have a different reputation today.

But, horrible though her senseless killing is, we didn't know the girl. Millions of us, generations of us, knew and admired the romantic, picturesque tree, at least from pictures of it if not IRL. It seems crass to think it matters at all compared to the death of a young person, but honestly it feels like it does. At least I think we can rage against both senseless acts without feeling silly for caring about a plant.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
What exactly do you do in this kind of situation? Find another mature tree and transplant it? Plant another young tree? Leave the stump and a placard describing what happened and what used to be there?

A historical landmark like this isn't really replaceable, this is a huge bummer.
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Stump, plaque, replant a sapling of the original tree, name it Antoninus Pius.

Salvage what else you can by selling overpriced trinkets made from the wood with all proceeds toward park conservation.
 
commandlinegamer said:
I'd be at least mildly astonished if a 16 year old accomplished this on their own.
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Cutting a tree down safely can be a time consuming task, but I wonder if this galaxy brain just said YOLO and did it quick and dirty. In a more just world the trunk would have crushed him flat.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
Cutting a tree down safely can be a time consuming task, but I wonder if this galaxy brain just said YOLO and did it quick and dirty. In a more just world the trunk would have crushed him flat.
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As Andy Ross said it looks like whoever did it knew what they were doing. It's a wedge cut with the outline of the cut painted out. Plus to cut a tree at such a wide base needs a serious chainsaw to do.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
As Andy Ross said it looks like whoever did it knew what they were doing. It's a wedge cut with the outline of the cut painted out. Plus to cut a tree at such a wide base needs a serious chainsaw to do.
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Sure, a wedge cut shows a bit more sophistication than cutting straight through with a chainsaw, but this is the kind of thing you can learn on the internet with a simple google search. I don't think it's inherently suspicious that a 16 year old could have figured that out on their own if they were motivated for whatever reason.
 
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