The Great Storm - 30 years ago.

[ian]

I once fell out of a horse chestnut tree (when conkering goes wrong, series 3, episode 19). I didn't fall on anyone. A hawthorn bush broke my fall which was good (because I'd climbed right to the top and bad because it was a spiky hawthorn bush and not a big fluffy pillow).

Gave me my first proper scar for chicks to dig (though there was no chickdiggery for a while as I was about 10 and come to think of it, I'm probably still waiting) – one of the branches went through my arm and came out of my armpit. So I had to pull it out. Blood went everywhere. It was ace though it did, I suppose, set the scene for catastrophic blood loss in later life.

[Exit Stage Left]

Having recently read Anthony Beevor's Ardennes, Hitler's Last Gamble, one of the things mentioned several times is that the amount of shelling that took place, including proximity fused shells, resulting in huge amounts of shrapnel embedded in trees rendered forestry in large parts of the Ardennes practically impossible and the timber worthless.

Were the swedes intending to harvest any trees where they let the military loose?

It was entirely for this beetle.

Osmoderma eremita, the hermit beetle or Russian leather beetle,[2] is a species of European beetle in the Scarabaeidae family. Adults reach between 28 and 32 mm in length.[3]

The larvae develop in hollow trees. Oak is the most important tree species, but the larvae may develop in any tree species with suitable hollows.[2] Due to habitat loss and fragmentation, the species has decreased all over its distribution range. For that reason the species is protected in most European countries, and has been given the highest priority according to the EU's Habitats Directive.[2] O. eremita can be found everywhere in Europe, except for The United Kingdom, Iceland, Ireland, Malta, Portugal, and San Marino.[4]


Larva
Trained conservation detection dogs are being used in monitoring larvae in Italy.[5]

The UK has the best veteran trees in Europe, other nations are a bit tidy-minded, so we don't tend to need to do anything much different. We tend to concentrate on maintaining our first place in knackered old hulks of trees.

[Mr Larrington]

A standard tactic used by monkeywrenchers against loggers in the Pacific Northwest is to hammer sturdy nails into trees, to the discomfiture of chsinsaws.

[David Martin]

Knackered old trees are great for bats.
1987. My first year at Uni and the Chemistry Soc away day. I made it into college via a diversion from New Malden to Morden to get the tube as there were the Wrong Kind of Leaves [1] on the line to Waterloo. Got to College and discovered the awayday had been cancelled. Spent the following years bemoaning the loss of trees on Box Hill and environs.

[1] The sort that are still attached to the tree.

[Aunt Maud]

A standard tactic used by monkeywrenchers against loggers in the Pacific Northwest is to hammer sturdy nails into trees, to the discomfiture of chsinsaws.

I believe that they used buried ceramic rods in Australia to thwart the loggers on the east coast. They may get past the chainsaw, but a harvester and the mill don't like it.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

A lot of the bread and butter tree-felling is now done by harvesters or tree-shears.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwOrKizyuxA

They are cool bits of kit but I've only seen them clear cutting plantations, rather than removing an individual tree from a congested forest. Obviously you have to be able to get a decent-sized excavator into place. Wirecutting kit is man-portable.

[Exit Stage Left]

A lot of the bread and butter tree-felling is now done by harvesters or tree-shears.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwOrKizyuxA

They are cool bits of kit but I've only seen them clear cutting plantations, rather than removing an individual tree from a congested forest. Obviously you have to be able to get a decent-sized excavator into place. Wirecutting kit is man-portable.

The safest pace to be when a tree is being felled is right next to the trunk, assuming you know what you are doing. Dead branches are a problem, hence my concern that Ash dieback casualties are tackled sooner, rather than later. Dead branches tend to get rattled out of the canopy in high winds. It's poor directional felling that causes a lot of hung-up trees.

The casualty stats usually highlight those with access to chainsaws, but with no training.

Booby-trapping trees to prevent felling is an interesting area. I've done a lot of felling to improve the structural diversity of woodland, under the direction of conservation bodies. That can lead to MTB and motorcycle use, which undermines the aims of the management work. You get the occasional hothead who advocates stringing  wire or rope across tracks. Obviously, an approach which can cause injury or death is unacceptable.

I'm doing the same thing as loggers, but with a positive environmental outcome. I'm also engaged in cycling, which is damaging in some contexts. So I'm not that keen on activists taking things into their own hands, I see no glamour in creating hazards for workers.

[Jurek]

A lot of the bread and butter tree-felling is now done by harvesters or tree-shears.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwOrKizyuxA

The power of hydraulics never ceases to amaze....

[Wowbagger]

We had the high winds up in the North West, too. It just didn't make the news because, well... regions.

What seemed to me to be a reasonable assessment was that the storm that hit Se England in October 1987 was a 200-year event in SE England, but the equivalent would be a 40-50 year even in the Western Isles.

It therefore has to be remembered that buildings, trees etc. in SE England will have been built/grown to a particular standard - one which would have seen them demolished 50 years ago in Stornoway.

[Ruthie]

I had just left home and was woken up by the sound of roof tiles blowing off my boyfriend's roof.

That was my very first dealings with the Tradesman species.

When we moved to Lovedean about four years later, the bluebell woods around HMS Mercury were absolutely stunning in the Spring.  Apparently the opening out of the woods after so many trees were lost, led to more bluebells.

[Aunt Maud]

There's much to say for the wholesale revival of coppice practice in British woodlands.

[ElyDave]

Knackered old trees are great for bats.
1987. My first year at Uni and the Chemistry Soc away day. I made it into college via a diversion from New Malden to Morden to get the tube as there were the Wrong Kind of Leaves [1] on the line to Waterloo. Got to College and discovered the awayday had been cancelled. Spent the following years bemoaning the loss of trees on Box Hill and environs.

[1] The sort that are still attached to the tree.

Cricket or baseball?

[Palinurus]

As ever, Southsea beach ended up on the seafront road, so did a number of beach huts and a few boats.

I lived in Southsea at the time, I was walking back from Basins in the early hours and was chased down an alleyway by part of a tree. After that I walked down to the front to see how big the waves were (quite big!)

Quite by chance I came across the reason I was walking back from Basins the other day.