Harvesting wood

[didicoy]

However, on visiting the area this morning, I found that the Forestry Commission had been doing a bit of pruning of their own. Having seen their efforts, it almost makes me wonder why I bother to take care with my own cutting!

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Quick to assume the work was carried out by the Forestry Commission Bartooon. Having worked for them, I can assure you that other than a handful of service/maintenance personnel throughout the UK, who physically use a chainsaw from time to time. There is no chance Forestry Commission staff would be asked or paid to get their bum in a tractor to flail any tree growth. The operations side is down to Forest Enterprise and or contractors. We are all aware of the need to keep firebreaks, access roads and services free of any encroaching tree growth & the potential cost in man-hours. The evidence shown in your photos are typical of any farm with hedgerows throughout the Country. To assume bad practice on part of the site managers is not called for. Yes there are better & more esthetically pleasing ways to leave managed growth. Poor management would be to do nothing at all.

 

[ateallthepies]

The trees being ring barked were Sycamore. I had a chat with a local couple in the woods today and they said the trees were being removed because they were not native to these woods??? Would this be correct? The trees were healthy by all accounts while many other standing dead trees have been left! These trees were ringed several years ago and have been left to just fall on their own.
I agree dead trees are an important part of the woodland but destroying healthy trees while many other species rot where they stand seems weird?







Bases and crowns...













Steve

 

[British Red]

The trees being ring barked were Sycamore. I had a chat with a local couple in the woods today and they said the trees were being removed because they were not native to these woods??? Would this be correct?
Steve

Sycamore are not a native British tree so yes, that would be true - they are amazingly invasive and often one of the first trees to enter fallow ground.

 

[Mesquite]

Technically they're right, as it's regarded as naturalised species as opposed to a native British species

Wiki entry

[h=2]History[edit][/h]Ted Green (2005)[SUP][citation needed][/SUP] believes that the sycamore has been present in Britain since at least the Bronze Age citing that Sycamore pollen has often been confused with that of Field Maple in Bronze Age and Iron Age burials[SUP][citation needed][/SUP]. He suggests that it should be renamed "Celtic Maple".
The lack of old native names for it has been used to demonstrate its absence in Britain before introduction in around 1487, but this is challenged by the presence of an old Scottish Gaelic name for the tree, fior chrann which suggests a longer presence in Scotland at least as far back as the Gaelic settlement at Dal Riada. This would make it either an archaeophyte (a naturalised tree introduced by humans before 1500) or perhaps native if it can be seen to have reached Scotland without human intervention.
It has been suggested that it could have been common up until Roman times when it went through a decline possibly brought about by climate change and human activities, surviving only in the mountains of Scotland.
At the moment it is usually classified as a neophyte, a plant that is naturalised but arrived with humans on or after the year 1500.[SUP][7][/SUP]

Whoever decided to ring bark them is being somewhat risky because if someone was injured from a falling branch they'd probably have a good case against the landowner

 

[Stew]

Interesting.

whereabouts in Herts are you?

 

[ateallthepies]

I always thought Sycamores were British through and through, I learn something new here every day!

Mill End in Rickmansworth Stew.

 

[British Red]

Its a point of contention as to whether they are - accepted wisdom says no, but that is challenged

This may interest you - an extract from a pfaf article on pioneer species

Acer pseudoplatanus. Sycamore has gained a bad reputation as an aggressive weed tree that can prevent native trees such as oak from maintaining themselves. However, recent research has shown that, in the longer term of 200 years or more, sycamore is not really such a bad species, and when planting a new native woodland the Forestry Commission will suggest including some sycamore to help the native species.

One real drawback with using this species as a pioneer is that it does not know when to go away and will continue to sow itself around long after the woodland has become established.

It may explain the thinning going on - but I must admit, I've not encountered them just ring barked like that

 

[didicoy]

Acer species (Sycamore) Naturalized though none native. Acer sp especially when mature can become very invasive. Depending on the management plan of the wood and its importance historically, locally & environmentally. These trees may have been ring-barked, to prevent further seed distribution and left standing for wildlife and reduce wind exposure to the other native (favored) tree species within that compartment or could be that extraction is just not commercially/environmentally viable. Often when woodlands are in private ownership, the owner seeks to exploit the timber for financial gain. If constraints are put on the amount of trees/timber the owner can fell/remove annually. I has been known for owners to deliberately ring-bark trees, making them dangerous & therefor needing felling at some point. I worked in a wood where the owner even tethered goats to selected trees that he wanted for fire wood in the coming years following numerous threats of court action for tree felling.

 

[Pterodaktyl]

I worked in a wood where the owner even tethered goats to selected trees that he wanted for fire wood in the coming years following numerous threats of court action for tree felling.

I'm intrigued - does the goat get hungry and chew the bark off, or does the chaffing action of the rope as the goat moves around the trunk eventually bark it?

 

[British Red]

Goats eat anything - actually goats eat everything. Bark, brambles, nettles, clothes (buttons and elastic included), wood, decking, saplings, leaves and much more.

Actually their digestive system requires an amount of rough material (although the rest is not good for them - but they are curious, can climb and have very good gnawing ability)

 

[Macaroon]

They always used to say if you want to clear a piece of ground with the minimum of labour, run goats on it 'till they've had all they can get then follow up with pigs; there won't be much left after a surprisingly short period!

 

[British Red]

They did a good piece on that on Australian River Cottage Mac - worked well clearing bramble

 

[Harvestman]

The Woodland Trust are currently using goats to clear brambles from the orchard at my site. the orchard was in danger of being swamped, and several trees had been killed by brambles growing right over them and shading them out, but the goats are now doing a fantastic job of eating the brambles.

 

[craeg]

Seems like a shocking practice Bartooon but it seems they do this everywhere as flailing is possibly the cheapest and quickest method but Stew is right, the trees will grow back strong.

 

[John Fenna]

Noisy, ugly and intrusive - but cheap and low skilled.
Just like so many modern practices that have replaced traditional countryside skills....
A well laid hedge is a thing of beauty and great longevity - but costs too much in this day and age - while flailing (we call it "Hedge Raping") is cheap but needs doing every year - but next year is in the future so accountants/budgeteers do not worry about that!

 

[didicoy]

Noisy, ugly and intrusive - but cheap and low skilled.
Just like so many modern practices that have replaced traditional countryside skills....
A well laid hedge is a thing of beauty and great longevity - but costs too much in this day and age - while flailing (we call it "Hedge Raping") is cheap but needs doing every year - but next year is in the future so accountants/budgeteers do not worry about that!

Even a well laid hedge will need to be trimmed withing 5 years and routinely thereon, if that is how it will be managed. However landowners/farmers have been encouraged to flail only one side of any hedge, once every two years. This allows production of seed/food. I have taken pride in my hedgelaying skills I am on several County Councils approved contractors list. However, more and more hedgelayers are relying on their chainsaw to make fast/light work of a poorly paid craft. Where with a billhook, the blade will crosscut cleanly and if cut at a angle, the water will flow off the stump and no organic build up will occur, that can encourage rot, a chainsaw can leave a cruder finish. For years working as a hedgelayer, I have hated the tractor flail method. I now fully understand the necessity on economic grounds.

 

[mr dazzler]

Even a well laid hedge will need to be trimmed withing 5 years and routinely thereon, if that is how it will be managed. However landowners/farmers have been encouraged to flail only one side of any hedge, once every two years. This allows production of seed/food. I have taken pride in my hedgelaying skills I am on several County Councils approved contractors list. However, more and more hedgelayers are relying on their chainsaw to make fast/light work of a poorly paid craft. Where with a billhook, the blade will crosscut cleanly and if cut at a angle, the water will flow off the stump and no organic build up will occur, that can encourage rot, a chainsaw can leave a cruder finish. For years working as a hedgelayer, I have hated the tractor flail method. I now fully understand the necessity on economic grounds.

Does a flailed hedge eventually stop being stock proof?

 

[Uilleachan]

Personally I don't like the flailed look on trees, but as others have said it's largely cosmetic. Dead standing wood too is part and parcel of a healthy wood, a wood needs dead wood of all sizes and in all stages of decomposition to be healthy.

In the 90's I had a job in Antrim NI, stabilising a cliff above a costal path. Part of the job entailed bolting around 20 metric cubes of basalt block and building a concrete buttress by way of a retention plan. Just didn't make sense to me; £25k of work to retain the blocks, versus £500 to drop them and around £2k to reinstate the double path and hairpin underneath. So I talked the engineer into it and we reallocated the balance of the £22.5k into other areas of the job where the council had been a little light in their estimation.

The face cleaned up like a dream and the path proved to be easy to reinstate. Local reaction was however a little more problematic to deal with. For all the world it looked like we'd wrecked the slope below, which held all manner of lovely, unique to the area, flora. I just couldn't make the locals see that come the spring all would be back to normal. The thing that caught the eye of course being a ruddy muddy and rubbley scare down the hill side, the track marks from the machine that picked up the big bits just lent to the apocalyptic scene. They just wouldn't believe me as their eyes were telling them otherwise. So, a bit of a bone of contention with the locals

The following summer I attended a pre job site meeting for the next phase, there in all it's glory was the slope completely grown back and looking magnificent as only the antrim coast can. Credit where credits due though, all my most ardent detractors (representatives of the local community council) made a point of letting me know that they'd over reacted and that we'd been right to do as we did, essentially we'd preserved the natural character of that particular spot, no bolt heads and no mass of concrete to detract from the beauty of the place. That earned me more than a few drinks in the local pub over the course of the next phase.