The Tree Pathway

Trees and the 'Great Storm' of 1987

16 October 1987

"The storm was universally treated as a disaster and a tragedy; it was bad for conservation; it had 'destroyed ancient woodland'; it was unprecedented ... Like all tragedies, it could be put right by Money ... 'Action was a substitute for thought.' All through that wet winter, machines galumphed through the woods, getting out timber which was sold at bottom prices. Men were found to clear 'dangerous' trees ... Young trees were hastily bought from somewhere and stuck in the ground. Ecological damage done by clearing-up and replanting exceeded that done by the storm itself ... Conservation bodies should have realised that the storm was a rare and wonderful event, good for wildlife and to be made the most of; but many of them joined the panic with the same squeals as everyone else. A few kept their heads. The organisation Common Ground instantly commissioned and published a set of postcards on the theme 'Don't Chop Them Down; Don't Chop Them Up'. Rochford District Council ... decided to do the minimum necessary to reopen the footpaths, and was not to be deflected from its coppicing programme ...

Next summer it emerged that most of the trees 'lost' in the storm had not actually been killed. Broadleaved trees, if broken, resumed growth as they would have done if pollarded. Most uprooted trees, apart from beeches on thin soils, were in at least normal health, and some were flourishing horizontally ... Even conifers, which are set in their ways, lived more often than not. This outcome, correctly predicted by Common Ground, is so wildly outside most people's expectations that even when taken out and confronted with the evidence they refuse to believe it."

Oliver Rackham, 'Trees & Woodland in the British Landscape' p. 202-3 (Dent, 1990)

Richard Mabey's new book "Beechcombings: the narratives of Trees" (Chatto & Windus, October 2007) takes as its starting point the Great Storm and its unfortunate aftermath. READ MORE

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