“Mindless”.
“Scummy”.
“Moronic”.
“Bone-headed”.
“Nihilistic”.
“Vandals”.
So many of us have loved hating the antisocial culprits now found guilty of the “unfathomable” chain sawing of Northumbria’s famous Sycamore Gap tree.
The media and public response to the story and the ensuing court case took various forms. There was sorrow resulting from the cultural value of this celebrity tree; despair at the crass stupidity of the vandalism; human interest in the backstabbing treachery of the one-time friends; and punitive fantasies ranging from birching to the stocks. There were also predictable comments such as “it’s just a tree” and hope stirred by the sprouting shoots and replacement trees that were planted. Above all, questions of motivation came to the fore. Why was the tree felled?
The sycamore that once nestled so artfully in its dip by Hadrian’s Wall has become a powerful symbol of the shifting relationship between humans and the rest of the living world. The illegal felling of the tree by Daniel Michael Graham and Adam Carruthers has highlighted this troubling disconnection, forcing us to ask whether we are becoming less psychologically anchored to our natural surroundings.
A deeply felt loss
Even before it was felled in 2023, the sycamore was one of the world’s most famous trees. Although not ancient and far from rare, the sycamore was much loved and revered, frequently being described as “iconic”, “totemic”, and “sacred”. It even became something of a movie star, making a guest appearance in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costner in 1991.
The Sycamore Gap has been meaningful for generations of walkers, friends, historians, artists, lovers, photographers, locals and tourists alike. It has been the site of many a family picnic and the occasional marriage proposal. Prominent nature writer Robert Macfarlane paid tribute to the sycamore’s status as a world tree with a choral requiem, set to music by Matthew Whittall and performed by the Helsinki Chamber Choir. It is understandable that the loss of this widely admired and befriended tree has been regarded as an act of desecration.
But what about …?
Whilst the felling of the sycamore has become one of this season’s most high-profile green stories, this crime has also provoked some legitimate ‘whataboutery’. Is the story a distraction from the ecological crisis or a relatable means to address it? Why doesn’t the felling of less extrovert, rarer trees, and in greater numbers, get the same attention? Time and time again, habitat destruction in our green and pleasant land provokes less concern than the Sycamore Gap, even in more ecologically damaging cases. Tony Juniper of Natural England extended the conversation about the destruction of the cherished sycamore to a wider concern about habitat and species loss in the countryside.
Could it be that class or some other bias justifies the wholesale systematic ecological destruction of many trees as a necessary evil while demonising isolated outrages against nature by antisocial individuals?
The recent felling of the nearly 500-year-old Whitewebbs Oak by a company owned by restaurant group Toby Carvery has not attracted nearly the same level of outrage, despite its greater ecological and historical significance. Admittedly, there is a markedly contrasting intention behind the act. Ostensibly, this toppling was for public safety, although legal action may yet follow.
In the Bristol area alone, campaigners are mounting legal challenges to prevent the loss of green spaces at Brislington Meadows, Bristol Zoo Gardens, Yew Tree Farm and elsewhere.
More far-reaching policy misadventures such as the HS2 rail link have been particularly damaging. The Woodland Trust recorded that Phase 1 construction will result in 55 ancient woodlands “suffer[ing] direct loss or harmful indirect effects”.
Yet another news story that did not attract such media attention was the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee report which cited the UK as “one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world”. Birds are major indicator species. Increasing scarcity of key bird species is significant evidence of nature depletion. We see the incremental but inexorable decline of summer migrants such as swallows and swifts, rapidly diminishing breeding populations of curlews and turtle doves, and plummeting numbers of once-common species such as tree sparrows.
Anti-environment politics
The furore which fails to engulf the nation with each bold attack on the environment suggests our that we are increasingly disassociated from nature. Addressing this apathy requires profound political and cultural change, yet we are living in times that are worryingly anti-ecological.
A political party which can be described as having anti-environment policies is making great strides, attracting voters and popularity like its counterparts around the world. Seemingly severed from the real world, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves called for the abandonment of Environmental Impact Assessments and the dilution of other environmental planning rules, notoriously singling out concern for newts and bats as obstacles to economic growth. With proposals like this from central government, the transformation of lands blossoming, breathing, squawking, slithering, teeming with life into inert expanses of concrete or monocultures continues to threaten the UK.
A case study
As many of the public quietly buffeted proposals for reduced environmental protections, the trial of the Sycamore Gap tree, which had elicited so much public support for our natural world, began on 28 April. After a nine-day trial, Graham and Carruthers were each found guilty of two counts of criminal damage. However, the reasons why they committed the crime at all require some unpicking.
Regarding their motivations, the defendants kept silent and maintained their denials. One of the defendant’s comments that it was “just a tree” was ultimately belied by their efforts to reach it. They placed enough value on that tree to travel from the Carlisle area through Storm Agnes on their adventure. Once lured by the mesmeric effect of the tree’s fame, the extracted wedge was fetishised as a “trophy”, a souvenir of derring-do.
Whatever bravado fuelled the covert operation backfired spectacularly. Ironically, the digital technology that made the manoeuvre in the dark attractive also enabled the surveillance that was the defendants’ undoing. The hapless defence underwhelmed the courtroom, from the farcical macho posturing in balaclavas on arrival at the trial to the naïve request to have a quick chat with the jury towards the close.
While their deed jarred bafflingly and violently with many of society’s values, the culprits’ “mindless” minds were certainly filled with desires that reflect social norms, too. They were eager to make an impact on social media and sought the thrill of “going viral”. There was the acquisitiveness of their super-charged trophy. Manly camaraderie appears to be another ill-grounded motive, and sadly, a real-life subplot of the Sycamore Gap story is one of broken friendship, as mateyness fractured into mutual hostility during the trial.
A collision of values
The voices of condemnation are loud in this case because the clash in values is a head-on collision. On one side, there are the cultural currencies of power and fame, which are valorised; these were sought by Graham and Carruthers. Opposing this, there are the moral currencies of nature appreciation, mutual aid and human connection. The convicted men made a grand public challenge to these values, which then brought down the fury of much of that public upon them.
But such muddled notions of self-interest suggest that alienation could be a useful lens to help piece together the puzzle of the Sycamore Gap. The defendants only connected with the power of the sycamore in a way that was fatal to the tree. Some news stories reveal disconnections with the local community in Cumbria with one defendant being in a legal battle over a contested building development, suggesting a longer history of conflict and exclusion. Apparently, the emergence of Graham’s fractious interpersonal spat with Carruthers followed a pre-existing quarrel with village neighbours.
A cultural economy where the currency of power and fame is prioritised rubs up against a kind of moral economy, where unrewarded values of nature appreciation, social solidarity, mutual aid and human connection make competing claims on personal fulfilment.
Fighting alienation
It will require systemic change to shift the estrangement and commodifying mentality that rejoices at the arboricide of a beloved tree at the Sycamore Gap and seizes it as a trophy. We need profound political and cultural change towards a needs-based, regenerative economy to address the ecological crisis.
But there are simpler solutions that will help to reenchant the earth too. Robert Louv tried to address the malaise of disconnection in coining the phrase “nature deficit disorder”. Alienation dissipates when we experience nature together. When we talk, listen, taste, smell, and touch, we can garden and rewild to defend the living world in solidarity.
Other work by the same author: ‘We Must Begin With The Land’ by Stephen Hunt.
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