UK: Devon Village in Shock After Government Removed 100 Ancient Beech Trees

Devon village in the UK was shocked after they woke up one morning to an act of environmental vandalism as the government removed 100 ancient beech trees.

The east Devon residents were currently grieving the loss of the beloved trees in a particular conservation area, home to many local plants and Devon animals.

Devon Village in Shock at Felling of 100 Ancient Beech Trees

The government removed the ancient beech trees without consulting the community or the council. A local landowner to the Forestry Commission, a branch of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said it would not comment on individual cases but said all decisions were taken in line with its standards.

Alan Pearce, a tree warden from the area, said it should be a reasonably comprehensive consultation because it was a part of their heritage, grown-out hedges that go back hundreds of years. He said that it takes 200 years to regrow the trees.

He added that the stumps looked nearly perfect and solid, so he could not see if the government could say they were diseased or dying. He noted they were meant to be planting trees, not felling them.

Pearce shared that people were horrified, with one walker in tears over the decision, which he suggested may have been taken to improve grazing land in the adjacent field.

Another resident named Fiona Carroll expressed her concerns and said, "Many people walk in this area as it is part of a large expanse of heathland, and they are at a loss as to why this has been allowed to happen. In my view, these were valuable landscape and wildlife trees situated along an extensive ancient Devon bank. My current impression is that this destruction is nothing short of environmental vandalism."

Ewan Macdonald, a researcher at the University of Oxford, said he was not surprised that the felling of the trees had resulted in such an emotional reaction because of how people connected with trees. He explained that it highlighted how intrinsically bound up things like trees, the environment, and conservation were with their culture.

Macdonald defended the Devon community and said the Forestry Commission had no good reasons for removing the trees. He claimed that at least communicating those reasons to people and making sure the community feels engaged and brought into that was an important thing to the people of Devon.

(Photo : DAMIEN MEYER/AFP via Getty Images)
This aerial photograph shows the Ponthus beech tree, lying on the ground after it was broken by the strong winds from the Ciaran storm in Broceliande Forest in Paimpont, western France on November 3, 2023.

Environmental Vandalism in England

The felling of 40 palm trees in Torquay in Devon was recently featured in the 1970s sitcom 'Fawlty Towers,' which sparked accusations that the council had wrought destruction on the seafront.

In March 2023, 110 trees were removed in Plymouth as part of the landscaping of the city's Armada Way, which led to the resignation of the council's Conservative leader.

In 2016, five people were arrested in a dispute with the council over tree felling in an affluent Sheffield suburb. Nick Clegg, the constituency's MP, said that the incident was something people would expect to see in Putin's Russia rather than a Sheffield suburb.