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The Sycamore Gap tree held a particularly deep place in people's hearts
- politelemon 3y agoIs the motive behind the felling still unknown?
- londons_explore 3y agoThe motive behind many crimes is never found out. Turns out that even if the accused did have a logical motive for committing the crime, they tend to not reveal it to investigators to have a better chance at not going to prison.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoRegardless of conviction, does having a motive for a crime typically increase the sentence? I would have thought it would be more likely to be the other way round.
- ttyprintk 3y agoNot a lawyer, but I would expect sentencing considers at minimum the details of the conviction. Maybe at that stage a lack of explanation under pressure presents as a lack of remorse. But before conviction, not having a motive furthers certain defenses, and those possibilities can be useful in the context of plea bargaining.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoI'm guessing: for the lulz, because wind-up merchants don't just live online.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoJargon question: what is “the lulz”?
- ddejohn 3y agoAnalogous to saying "for the laughs"
- willis936 3y agoHere is more than anyone should ever know about the lulz. https://encyclopediadramatica.online/Lulz https://encyclopediadramatica.online/Lulz
- growingkittens 3y agoPosting a link to encyclopedia dramatica without a NSFW tag...for the lulz. (One of the first few images is of a ninja turtle raping a pokemon.)
- jacquesm 3y agoTwo people have been arrested, and there is a ton of speculation but those suspected deny having anything to do with it. https://www.perthnow.com.au/travel/europe/sycamore-gap-was-tree-felled-over-dispute-between-lumberjack-national-trust-and-500yo-catholic-order-c-12212221 https://www.perthnow.com.au/travel/europe/sycamore-gap-was-t... (that's an Australian site but I've yet to see a UK one with the same level of balance and detail)
- cipheredStones 3y agoTo summarize, the 69-year-old man who was arrested (in addition to a 16-year-old boy) is a former lumberjack who had been in a legal battle to continue leasing land that had been in his family for many years, and lost the case just before the tree was cut down.
- davidvaughan 3y agoDo I detect some Aussie tongue in cheek here... "Mr Renwick was quick to protest his innocence. “You’ve got the wrong feller,” he told reporters."
- darrenf 3y agoThat is a UK source. Yes it's on Perth Now, but the byline clearly says it was by a Daily Mail journalist and here it is from the Mail on Sunday: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-mail-on-sunday/20231015/282368339307413 https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-mail-on-sunday/20231015/2...
- pinewurst 3y agohttps://archive.ph/0V1K8 https://archive.ph/0V1K8
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- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- 11235813213455 3y agoLet's fall a hundred of SUVs to balance the prejudice
- smolder 3y agoBesides this being ridiculous, I can't make sense of what "balance the prejudice" means. I'm not seeing evidence of prejudice against trees here, nor do I know what that would mean. Someone prejudged that the tree was up to no good and murdered it? This is almost definitely vandalism, and likely has nothing to do with the conflict between modernity and nature, or with SUVs. The crime wasn't committed by Chevy or Ford, or by an SUV of theirs.
- 11235813213455 3y agoenvironmental prejudice, tree is doing good things for the ecosystem, cars absolutely nothing positive, you see?
- spicybright 3y agoLet's do the fake blood on people buy fur thing. Just with molotovs at the end of the assembly lines.
- barney54 3y agoHere’s more pictures of the tree here: https://www.northumberlandnationalpark.org.uk/places-to-visit/hadrians-wall/sycamore-gap/ https://www.northumberlandnationalpark.org.uk/places-to-visi...
- doctorpangloss 3y agoIn my community: I love the cutsie pootsie Victorians everywhere, the time-capsule 1910s look. Some people want to make it easier to demolish this stuff and build whatever house you want - the rule is you have to keep the facade or whatever - and I sympathize with that. But nobody gives a fuck about the brutalist structures being torn down, like the VA in Chicago or the Federal Building in Boston, because they're ugly. I mean they are of significantly greater historical significance than some random dilapidated Victorian home in San Francisco. So the law protects the local community's most mobilized opinion of what's pretty and cute, not what's significant. People's definition of meaningful or sentimental, when it relates to a past that isn't personally theirs / belonging to their family... it's a very mainstream notion of beauty or awe. It sucks for this tree, those kids should not have chopped it down, whatever, nobody needs to have that conversation. But have you personally ever given a fuck about a sentimental something outside your family that is also ugly?
- HPsquared 3y agoI'm happy with that bias.
- nathan_compton 3y agoYou may not have noticed, but objects literally have no value beyond what people think of them. If a community thinks a building is significant, it is.
- napierzaza 3y ago[dead]
- jfengel 3y agoIt's notable that this tree was probably a few hundred years old. That's not especially old by European or tree standards, and this tree was of no real historical significance. But it's older than any of those structures you describe. The brutalist structures might one day be beloved. Perhaps a few centuries from now. They're certainly built for it; one problem with them is that they're hard to demolish. (And often lousy air flow, which is hard to retrofit because the walls are literally artificial rock.) Ugly things can get some sentiment once you see it as "yours". Time can do that. Notions of beauty change, and things go in and out of fashion. Even trees have been seen as ugly at various points, when what people wanted was to tear it all down and build things.
- crtified 3y agoI wish the tree had not been felled. A very sad and poignant act. Also, as I pointed out in another conversation here, and in the name of reciprocal repetition will do so again here, it is quite easy to find reports of equally heartbroken locals, the world over, lamenting the deliberate felling of any number of special, beloved, prominent trees, in the name of the routine building of a new road or factory or housing development in humanitys continual march of progress. With one single tree evoking this much emotion, it is little wonder that in general we struggle to view mass environmental destruction as anything other than an abstract, distant notion. How could we mentally handle it, otherwise??
- pdpi 3y agoAt least felling trees to build things serves a purpose. Are those things worth the cost? Debatable, but at least there’s some attempt at justification. This one is particularly heartbreaking because you can’t even apply that cynical utilitarian logic to it. It seems like a completely wanton act of vandalism.
- indigochill 3y ago> At least felling trees to build things serves a purpose. Are those things worth the cost? I spent a little time in Finland a while back and although I didn't look deeply into it, my impression was they had a healthy relationship with trees. The country is heavily forested and they harvest many trees but they also replant diligently. One of the guys I spent a little time with there was also researching plant-based alternatives to plastics (in the vein of the infamous paper straws, plant-based wrappers instead of plastic wrappers, that kind of thing). Deforestation is absolutely a problem in some areas of the world, but tree farming can be done responsibly. They're an endlessly renewable resource if we only give them the space and time to grow.
- gnz11 3y agoI may be wrong but I believe the major problem with tree farming is that you lose biodiversity since what gets replanted is usually a single species.
- jibbit 3y agoWhat’s kinda poignant is that there was one tree left where there should be a forest, and you’re directed to feel angry when it is cut down
- dukeyukey 3y agoMuch of the UK was deforested at a minimum hundreds of years ago, and often thousands of years ago. Today, England is about 13% forest, and back in 1086 when the Domesday Book was written it was about 15%. Basically, this isn't new. At all.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoHow did they get numbers for percentage just after the norman conquest? Im imagining aerial maps for current measurements
- marcus_holmes 3y agoThey went around to every single village and town and asked them. The Doomsday book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book) is fascinating because of its thoroughness and completeness at such an early time.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoThanks! Definitely fascinating
- gambiting 3y agoHave you ever been there? The land in that area is rock with about an inch of soil on it, like most moorland - it would not support a forest, it never did(within the last couple thousand years anyway) . Romans didn't build the hadrians wall through a forest after all, the area was already barren then. And no one is directing me to feel angry - the tree did hold a special place in my heart, I've been to it with my dad shortly before he died, I've been there with my wife(then fiance), with my friends and family, it always felt like a pilgrimage to anyone living in the North East - and the fact that it was destroyed for literally no reason whatsoever makes my blood boil.
- atum47 3y agoIn the old days young people (mostly boys) would to stupid things to make their friends laugh; i can help to feel like that social networks elevate that behavior up to eleven. People now a days do all kinds of stupid shirt just to get views. I think the destruction of this tree was an example of that.
- a-dub 3y agopeople have been doing shitty things for a very long time. people have been talking about how "things are worse nowadays" also for a very long time. not much to do now other than try to science it back into existence, replace it with a similar one, plant a new one and wait or declare it done and move on.
- a-dub 3y agooh jeez, i almost forgot the most important option: create a new british detectives television series around the event where they drive around in small cars across the english countryside while discussing the case and making prodigious use of their mobile phones. include use of gen z messaging platforms and a lovable geriatric millennial character who plays the role of the senior inspector.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoSlower Horses?
- atum47 3y agoI mean, stupid shit finds a much larger audience pretty quick now a days. Harassing a police officers horse, bother the royal guard, eat the tidepod, planch in a dangerous place, those stupid YouTube pranks... Those are the mild ones, i saw a video of two teenagers who hit a police retired officer who was riding his bike. The whole thing was filmed. People have been evil from the beginning I give you that, but it seems young people are being drawn to that kind of behavior for likes and views now a days
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- swayvil 3y agoThe American aborigines did their thing for what, 10,000 years? (Yes, I know they arguably sucked. But still) Industrial civilization may not make it to 300.
- dukeyukey 3y agoA thousand years ago (and with about a fortieth the population) England had similar forest cover to what it is now. If anything, modern industrial civilization is what enabled the reforestation of the UK.
- User23 3y agoIt didn’t help that due to poor farming techniques a vast amount of topsoil in the west just got blown away. Whoops!
- walthamstow 3y agoDo you know anything I can read on the subject? My parents grew up in Norwood in south London which is named for the Great North Wood, which doesn't exist at anything like the extent it used to. I guess the numbers you're using are an average for the whole country, and that some areas that were not forested before now are?
- ionwake 3y agoI once decided it would be a cool idea to walk in straight line across England and began wondering how I would plan it. For some reason I noticed and realised my half way mark was a few meters away from this tree. As in if you look at a map the tree sits in the center of England where its diameter is at its narrowest - check it out. An odd thing. Looking at the topography from google maps and I remember thinking what an oddly beautiful tree in the middle of nowhere. I even noticed it had a Wikipedia entry. It was a few years ago and I never got round to trying to walk it. Now a couple years later I hear it’s been destroyed and I grow more concerned for the future of man.
- extraduder_ire 3y ago> sits in the center of England where its diameter is at its narrowest Seems like a good place to put a wall to split the land in two then. I wasn't aware until just now that the modern border of scotland is a good bit north of where Hadrian's wall is.
- Nursie 3y agoBut South of the Antonine Wall. Hadrian's gets all the recognition, and that's probably mostly because it is still recognisable, but the Romans built a second wall 20 years later, just to the north of where Glasgow and Edinburgh are now - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Wall It was built mostly of turf and wood, so time has erased it much more completely, and apparently they retreated back to Hadrian's wall after only a few years.
- GauntletWizard 3y agoThat might be another reason that Hadrian's Wall is more remembered - It's one they held for a reasonably long time (generations) whereas Antonine's was far more ephemeral in that way too. The Berlin Wall is almost gone, but I don't think anyone will forget it in a hurry.
- ionwake 3y agoVery interesting thank you
- andrewstuart 3y agoThere was a local project here on the railway lines. As part of the project they had to cut down a long row of giant pine trees in the park next to the train line. So when the railway project was complete I took my 8 year old son to the native nursery about bought ten mountain ash seedlings. Together we planted them in a long line in the park. Here's pictures of how big mountain ash gets: https://wilderlands.earth/stories/mountain-ash-the-giants-of-the-forest/ https://wilderlands.earth/stories/mountain-ash-the-giants-of... https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2013/02/gallery-eucalyptus-the-tallest-trees-in-australia/ https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-envir... https://weareexplorers.co/australias-tallest-tree-joins-100m-club/ https://weareexplorers.co/australias-tallest-tree-joins-100m... My theory is if you are angry about trees being cut down then take revenge by planting giant trees everywhere. Sadly I think only one or two of the seedlings have survived - I'll have to replant them. The point being: where the Sycamore Gap Tree was - go there and plant a forest of the same type of tree. Plant 1,000 of them.
- oooyay 3y agoIn Portland they recently started cutting trees down to widen the road for extended bus and bike lanes. That spawned a conversation that we've lost a third of our tree cover due to various things and the city hasn't kept up. That week I started burying cones from my Douglas Firs, which aren't nearly as big as the Mountain Ashes you planted, but are fairly large. With any luck I'll have five in my yard.
- pstuart 3y agoThe other Portland tree fail was where the city did plant trees they didn't bother to care for them: https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/08/09/trees-planted-by-the-city-in-east-portland-two-years-ago-are-dead-because-the-city-didnt-water-them/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/08/09/trees-planted-by-the-c... It would be nice to see more government collaboration where citizens can assist in ways that will actually stick.
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- jihadjihad 3y ago> Unlike other members of the genus Acer, it did not put on a blazing autumn display. Its big five-lobed leaves, with their irregular notching, merely turned a crumpled brown. No one minded. As someone who lives next to a neighbor with an enormous old sycamore--I mind! :P The leaves are gigantic and they fall late into Nov, so my entire property gets blanketed with sheets of brown cardstock! Alas it is worth the effort just to be able to see that awesome tree throughout the year.
- mvdtnz 3y agoOh no I'm so sorry you have to deal with nature.
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- offices 3y agoHN user understand tone challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
- kdmccormick 3y agoOkay, rake them up then?
- offices 3y agoThat's presumably the 'effort' they're referring to.
- kdmccormick 3y agoThat was added in an edit after downvotes and my comment :)
- RoyalHenOil 3y agoLucky! I bet you have fantastic soil. I recommend chopping them up with a mower (but don't bag them; leave them in place). The shredded leaves make a really great mulching layer just before winter, when grasses and other plants need that extra insulation, and then they break down and nourish the soil in spring when everything starts actively growing again. Do this process year after year, and you will have an absolutely gorgeous garden before long. It's a really good reason to plant deciduous trees (especially those that shed a lot of leaves that are too heavy to blow away). But they take such a long time to grow; you are super lucky to have a mature one over your garden already!
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoIt makes me feel some solace that this tree was just a tree. We, humans, gave it significance. But that significance was imaginary. It was just a sycamore. It was only special because we told ourselves stories, and decided it was much more than a sycamore. Strangely, even though the tree isn't actually dead, we pretend it is, because it won't look like it did when we assigned it significance. So really, nothing of value was lost. All that's happened is our own vanity and need for meaning was injured. And we'd never realize that unless it was felled. We aren't commemorating a tree. We're commemorating our own need to find meaning in the world.
- npteljes 3y agoFirst of all, feelings are not imaginary, even though they are non-physical, and despite many people not getting them, or having a bad relationship with some of them. Second, the tree was a landmark. This significance gave it tangible value, as it would attract tourism, which will now be lost.
- dukeyukey 3y agoWe will always look for meaning. But when we find it, even in something entirely imaginary (which I don't think it was here - natural beauty has a verifiable positive effect on humans), that's value. And trying to be reductive about it mostly harms your own ability to find meaning and see beauty.
- jmyeet 3y agoHumans are weird. It's wild to me how sentimental people can get about a tree or incensed by, say, someone kicking a dog (neither of which are good, for the record) yet be completely indifferent to completely preventable human suffering. Worse, that suffering is often painted as a moral failure by those who are suffering, almost like they deserve it. They can even cheer it on. I will never not find that bizarre. And sad.
- antisthenes 3y ago> yet be completely indifferent to completely preventable human suffering. A lot of human suffering is self-inflicted. There's also the point that humans have a higher bar for being able to take care of themselves. A human can and should defend themselves. A tree or a dog cannot. (and before someone decides to ackshually correct me, we've been breeding dogs for docility for over 10,000 years) > I will never not find that bizarre. You find bizarre that people have different value systems? Huh?
- shiroiuma 3y ago>and before someone decides to ackshually correct me, we've been breeding dogs for docility for over 10,000 years Some breeds were specifically bred for fighting, so I don't agree with this at all. Also, some breeds are bred for hunting, some for herding, etc.; these are not "docile" tasks. I think it's more accurate to say that dogs have been bred to be subservient to humans for 10k years. But even here, there's plenty of dogs specifically trained to be violent with humans: German Shepherds are notorious for this, as well as Rottweilers, which is why they're used for military/police work. But I completely agree about humans having a higher bar for taking care of themselves, and also we expect them to have a conscience and "do the right thing" and not cause needless destruction, and to work for the greater good.
- antisthenes 3y agoJust because dogs can be trained to do tasks that involve violence, doesn't mean they aren't super-docile and will try to avoid confrontation with their handler to the best of their ability. Look up what docile means.
- felipeerias 3y ago"Opposition to felling ancient trees is a peculiar cause because it seems to unite progressives and conservatives. There is something about taking the life of a being far older than the span of any human life, which has taken many centuries to reach such a size and whose roots and branches support entire ecosystems in miniature, that seems morally repugnant to many. [...] "It may well make no logical sense, as many have pointed out, to be more upset at the felling of one picturesque tree than at the destruction of whole rainforests. Yet, that is how humans are, for better or worse: we connect emotionally with individuals. The capacity of trees to embody a sort of individuality — to be anthropomorphised, if you like — may go some way towards explaining why our ancestors held them sacred. It is surely the reason why in our own day trees are amongst the most potent symbols of humanity’s unbalanced relationship with nature: dumb victims of our rapacious disregard for living beings with a much longer life cycle than our own." — https://thecritic.co.uk/sycamore-gap-and-britains-sacred-trees/ https://thecritic.co.uk/sycamore-gap-and-britains-sacred-tre...
- somedude895 3y ago> There is something about taking the life of a being far older than the span of any human life I see this with myself, not just with living beings but with anything historical. I noticed myself getting much more upset with ISIS' destruction of ancient sites than human lives, which was quite shocking.
- mcmoor 3y agoI'm reminded of meme about cross political quadrant synergy that when auth-right and lib-left both wants to conserve nature (because of "conserve" and "nature" respectively), auth-left and lib-right couldn't care less about it (because progress > established things).
- will5421 3y agoI don’t get why they don’t just put the tree back on its stump to see if it’ll grow back
- rpickering 3y agoEh?
- will5421 3y agoTake the fallen tree, lift it up and place it back where it was, on the stump in the ground. Hold it there to see if the tree will repair the cut
- CalRobert 3y agoWas it, perhaps, a fairy tree? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW1ys7d-CuI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW1ys7d-CuI
- Dylanfm 3y agoI wonder if they knew they were coppicing the tree, rather than killing it. Thankfully the tree will continue to grow, I think the land managers have chosen to leave the tree there. Many of the oldest trees around (at least in the UK) have signs of coppicing and pollarding. Those who cut the tree have unintentionally extended its life (e.g https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-20313113 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-203131...). The only issue is it wasn't done at the best time of year. You can read more about coppicing on the national coppice federation: https://ncfed.org.uk/public/coppicing/ https://ncfed.org.uk/public/coppicing/
- zeristor 3y agoTree of Ténéré "The Ténéré Tree (French: L'Arbre du Ténéré) was a solitary acacia (Vachellia tortilis) that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth, the only one for over 150 kilometres. It was a landmark on caravan routes through the Ténéré region of the Sahara Desert in northeast Niger, so well known that it and the Arbre Perdu (Lost Tree) to the north are the only trees to be shown on a map at a scale of 1:4,000,000. The Tree of Ténéré was located near a 40-metre deep well. It was knocked down in 1973 by a truck driver." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Ténéré https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Ténéré