The following blog post is based on a conversation between Stuart ‘The Wildman’ Mabbutt and William Mankelow. This conversation is featured on an episode of their podcast: The People’s Countryside Environmental Debate Podcast. The episode, titled ‘Environmental Intricacies Explored’, was released on the 21st of January, 2024, and you can listen to it here on Podfollow, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.
This transcription was created with the help of Sophie Williams, a micro-intern from the University of Oxford.
Life’s evolution has always formed and influenced the makeup of the Earth’s atmosphere with various tipping points along the way. Why wouldn’t man’s population passing 9.5 billion again be a tipping point? Planting trees costs a lot of money, and if many/most die, it is arguably a waste of money. Is it better to reduce the amount of trees we are cutting down and the drivers behind that cutting?
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Stuart: This is The People’s Countryside Environmental Debate Podcast. We don’t talk about the countryside as much as we used to. You guys send in questions, and we try and cover them all. We always try and bring it back to an environmental angle. We hope to stretch your thinking and maybe explore opinions, different opinions to yourselves, and realize opinions are not facts, they’re just momentary passes of consciousness. I’m Stuart, The Wildman, Mabbutt, one of the co-hosts, and he is:
William: I’m William Mankelow. Thanks very much for being with us and we’re well into the New Year now, aren’t we, Stuart? This podcast, as you say, Stuart, we don’t always talk about the environment, but it does cover 6 main themes, doesn’t it? And can I see if I can get these six main themes? I think I remember them now because I struggled for ages and ages and ages. So, it is the human condition, it is social justice, it is nature, philosophy, climate, and sustainability.
Stuart: Yeah, you had all that written down, I reckon, on your phone.
William: No, it’s all in my head. I’ve taken a lead from Suzi Darrington because she whipped it out. That sounds wrong. It came off the top of her head. She got them in one go and I felt ashamed that I did not know them myself. Yes, this is The People’s Countryside Environmental Debate Podcast.
Stuart: And we like to deal with certainties, but life is full of insecurities about our lack of knowledge. And William and I always try and to not cover up our lack of knowledge, we just try and explore the grey areas of our own understanding, and hopefully it relates to your understanding of the world as well, don’t you agree?
William: You can have certainties in life. You do know things, everybody has a certain amount of knowledge, but that knowledge ends at some point. And sometimes it’s best when you feel that you don’t have a bit of knowledge, is to listen to somebody who is knowledgeable about it and see what they have say about it.
Stuart: We try and have the conversations that need having. Very often they are conversations not a debate, but we try and show localized actions to try and improve the quality of life wherever you’re listening in the world through this podcast and through actions we try and address what some of the questions and the challenges you set us to discuss. So, we try and come up with actions, not every time, but we’re just like you, we’re just trying to find the way in the world, we’re not experts.
William: We’ve gone from having two releases a week, which was Sunday and Tuesday just to Sunday, but we are covering the same amount of questions in a week, that is being covered in one episode. The reason why we’re doing that is to freshen up the podcast format for ourselves and also for you as well. It keeps the podcast fresh. Stuart, I think does doesn’t it?
Stuart: Hm, yes it does and keep sending your questions in for us to discuss. We’ve now got 18 lined up. So, they’re reducing. We were up to about 70 odd at one time, but we’re down to about 18. So, if you get your question in now, we’ll cover it sooner than we would have done at one point. How can they email us the questions, William?
William: [email protected]. We also have a new tier benefit for our game changer backers as well, which will give you an opportunity to get your question to the front of the queue as well.
Stuart: What’s a game changer backer?
William: A game changer backer is through Patreon, a way of backing this, podcast financially. It is free for you to listen to. Well, it’s not free for us to make. We put quite a bit of time into this podcast, editing and that type of thing. It worries us, right Stuart?
Stuart: But there’s a change to the format in our Patreon releases come February 2024. What’s that?
William: Again, refreshing what we do, normally we would do every Monday, at least every Monday, there would be a new bit of fresh material, some of it’s public, some of it’s behind the pay wall. But we’re still going to do it every fortnight. But it’s still going be two posts.
Stuart: Yeah, 10:00 and. 5:00.
William: 10:00 and 5:00 yes.
Stuart: UK time. Hammer time! Right, we’ve got two questions today to cover one from Elaine in Telford, Shropshire, England.
William: It’s a good place for speedway, isn’t it? Seem to remember.
Stuart: Well Ice Speedway at one time back in the 90s in February.
William: Are you impressed by my memory?
Stuart: Yeah, well, sort of. Yeah. But, well, what day of the year was that on?
William: I have no idea.
Stuart: It was always on Valentine’s Day.
William: How romantic.
Stuart: Anyway, so Roman in Slovakia, he’s got a question for us as well. So, we’ll do Elaine’s and then we’ll do Roman’s. Do you want to read Elaine’s question out first, William?
William: Yes. Welcome back both Elaine and Roman, thank you very much for your questions. Both Roman and Elaine have sent in questions before. Elaine, from Telford and Shropshire. Elaine says, right from the start, life’s evolution has always formed and influenced the makeup of the Earth’s atmosphere with various tipping points along the way. Why wouldn’t man’s population passing 9.5 billion again be a tipping point? When will we all admit that human existence will have positive and negative effects on the planet? Will there ever be a time when we’re not motivated to change just because it has a personal benefit on us or our pockets?
Stuart: Loads in there.
William: There is definitely the overall feeling of this question for me, I agree with it. So, it’s this whole idea of, you know, we are part of nature. I think we often try and see ourselves as not part of nature and that it’s just part of the natural process. The natural evolution and who’s to say this hasn’t happened before, in the past, from species that we’re not even aware of. Or other parts of the universe. This happens all the time, maybe who knows?
Stuart: I was watching, I think it was a David Attenborough programme, a while back, autumn time I think it was. And he was talking about the evolution of the Earth’s atmosphere, oxygen. Now many people argue that life the instigator of life came from another planet. It was like a meteor, right, that it brought some chemical here that activated life. But wherever it came from, the first things were amoeba and plankton. And that when they started to evolve, that they would produce oxygen in the sea. And when the sea got to the capacity, couldn’t hold any more oxygen in it, little air bubbles would disappear and that formed the atmosphere, the oxygen in the atmosphere. That takes billions of years and so, what you’re saying there right from the start, life’s evolution has always formed and influenced the makeup of the Earth’s atmosphere with various tipping points along the way. Well, I think what you’re talking about there is that, you know, the oxygen in the water it then went in and formed the atmosphere that is then breathable. So yeah, life has a consequence. So why wouldn’t life have a consequence now? Which it brings you back to, is global warming manmade or not? Well, how can man not have an impact, positive and negative, which is what she says.
William: Yeah, because it’s all part of the natural cycle. Are we not just part of the natural cycle? I think this can verge on denying climate change, a little bit if we’re not careful, because both of us, I feel believe firmly in man’s position, man’s influence on climate change. But isn’t that also part of that natural cycle? I think the issue we have is that we’re conscious of it. You know, maybe a species previously maybe wasn’t conscious of their impact on the environment.
Stuart: Hmm. Yeah, these amoebae were just getting on doing their thing. Were they conscious?
William: Yes, or any animal, of course.
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Stuart: I mean in man approaching 9.5 billion in population, could that again be a tipping point? Well, why wouldn’t it be? And why aren’t there tipping points that we haven’t even noticed before? You know, tipping points happen all the time.
William: Yeah, there’s also a thing called the great filter, by the way, there are certain sort of like steps, filters that we’ve already gone past to actually get to this stage of our evolution. We’ve passed these filters and is there a great filter ahead of us that will stop us and one of them could be population. You have to remember really that population has really seriously gone up in the last 200 years. It’s really been that and that’s gone hand in hand with scientific advancement. You know, we think about the COVID pandemic and the horrific loss of life in the COVID pandemic. When you think about it, though, as a percentage of the population, that death rate wasn’t anywhere near as it would have been in the many, many Black Death plagues within the medieval periods. Really pretty much half of the population then, then less people as well, I would say, but nearly half the population died of that stuff because they didn’t understand, it wasn’t understood, whereas we understand it now. We’ve got so much scientific advancement in medicine, for example. And that is part of how we are actually becoming what we are. We’re becoming the species at 9.5 billion, nearly 10 billion people on this planet because we live longer, we’re healthier.
Stuart: Who’s to say that 9.5 billion is not sustainable, though? Because it’s the way we distribute the wealth and the food and the resources. That’s what’s not sustainable. I don’t think 9.5 billion is unsustainable, just the way we live it is.
William: And we talk about population as well as also something that we feel that we can’t actually control, but that’s not necessarily true, is it? Because again we understand with the advancement of science, we can control birth rate if we wanted to. But that’s kind of an elephant in the room I feel.
Stuart: I was reading the other day that in Japan that there’s a societal challenge there because there’s a shortage of births, of both genders.
William: I saw an intriguing map on Reddit the other day that showed every single country in Europe, with the predominant generation. It was saying what the predominant generation was and the vast majority of European countries are people over 50. That’s the highest part of the population. It was only a couple of countries, I think Sweden, that was more infants, and I can’t remember other ones, but I think it might have been somewhere, like, the Netherlands that was more GenX, I think. So, you know, it was quite fascinating that I would always thought that Europe maybe was younger, had a younger population. And as you say, Japan is really struggling because of the older population. It’s just there’s a lower birth rate going on there as well, isn’t there?
Stuart: There is. I think we’ve covered that life’s evolution will always have an influence on the Earth’s atmosphere and the Earth as a whole. We’ve also discussed this, but I’ll just quickly cover it. When will we all admit that the human existence will have positive and negative effects on the human planet? I don’t think we will all agree on anything. I don’t think we need to. Again, it’s the critical mass, you know.
William: Do you think they’ll ever be a point in the human future that we actually would get to a point where we do actually agree, where we can actually almost be a planet species rather than culturally country?
Stuart: You’d hope, but I think it’s uh…
William: Culturally countries is a terrible phrase.
Stuart: We’ve got to evolve a huge amount before we get to that point.
William: Well, we’re still very much in our early evolution as well.
Stuart: Yeah. Will there ever be a time when we’re not motivated to change just because it has personal benefit on us or our pockets? I remember leading a walk once and I asked this question, in this clearing. I said, you know, why doesn’t man live sustainably? And one person said we’ll never live sustainably because we’re only ever motivated by what’s in our pockets, which Elaine sort of hints at again. Will there ever be a time when we’re not motivated to change just because the personal benefit is in our pockets? I would hope to think there is a time where we’re motivated by other things as well, but I can’t ever see a point where we’re not motivated by how much money we’ve got in our pockets. That’s always going to influence these shiny things that we say have value, but it actually means nothing really.
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William: Yes, I’ve always found the concept of money a bit bizarre, particularly when money is just literally digits as in digital.
Stuart: Hmm yeah. I don’t imagine the time where we’re not motivated by that, but I’d like to imagine a time where we’re motivated by other things as well to answer that.
William: Could we actually get rid of money?
Stuart: Well, the modern-day manifestation we probably could, but the barter system is still money. There’s still a financial system. There’s still an exchange of goods and services. There’s still value. Again, I don’t know if we need to get rid of money, it’s just the value system needs to modify. We’re basically fucked, aren’t we?
William: Yeah, it didn’t take too long to get us to a swear word, did it? I’m going to reign myself in for this one. I mean, there is this world, it’s like the science fiction world of Star Trek, which talks about how humans were united because of their small steps into space were noticed by a passing alien. I mean, this is very human centric thinking anyway, and that first contact led to more harmonious [living] because we saw our place in the universe. I don’t think that would actually work. Could you imagine if aliens came now, what the world or actually how the world would react to it. We are very protectionist, aren’t we? We don’t want to be dominated. We never want to be dominated.
Stuart: If we ever manage to get out into space and colonise then we’re just going to make a mess of it like we have here. We haven’t learned the lessons.
William: How do we learn those lessons then? Let’s get very deep for a January podcast episode.
Stuart: Our own evolution and we’re not even there yet. It’s like the human brain. You asked me once how does acupuncture work. And I was thinking last night, an acupuncture, an interpretation I came up with last night. I can’t quite remember. But I think my conclusion was that when you take a painkiller, there are some painkillers that affect the nerve endings where the pain is. And then there are other painkillers that affect the receptors in the brain. So, acupuncture sort of is blocking those chains of communication. You have these certain pressure points around the body that if you stick a needle in it, it’s either going to confuse the brain because it’s recognising something at the nerve end or it’s got a direct line to the brain. So, you’re reworking the pathways in the brain, effectively. That’s how acupuncture works for me, and going back to the human brain, I don’t think we’ll ever really understand how acupuncture and things like that work because we don’t understand the human brain and the same with…
William: We’re beginning to understand it more.
Stuart: We are, but we will never catch up with it. We will always be behind.
William: Well, one of my favourite things said about neuroscience, I can’t remember who said it, but they said the weirdest thing about neuroscience is that it’s a brain thinking about the brain.
Stuart: It’s disturbing when you actually [think about it]. You never know where or how we’re going to evolve. I just think we’re on a losing wicket. You know, our ability to question and understand and in theory be conscious.
William: It’s going to be beyond our own lifetimes. Yeah, you know, way beyond our own lifetime. You know, we are all, but mere drops in the ocean when it comes to the evolution, even human evolution. You know, 50,000 years of history. You know, when we started really planting crops and becoming agricultural. It’s kind of some when some people argue that was when we started to really to become the humans that we are today, to really properly settle down into towns especially. That’s in evolutionary terms, that’s a long time, 50,000 years for a human, of course. But on a grander time scale, it’s just again another drop in the ocean. So, we’re a drop in the ocean, which is already a drop in the ocean itself.
Stuart: But the human brain has been evolving for more than those 50,000 years. It was evolving for millions of years before that, you know. So we’re millions of years behind our own brains. That’s a nice transition to the next question. We’re talking about planting there; Roman in Slovakia has placed our second question. He’s talking about planting. Do you want to have a read of this one? I’ve started to read it as you were talking. It’s kind of like a bit of crossfade going on.
William: It’s kind of like a bit of crossfade going on, the 1990s is calling me. Thanks for your question, Elaine. I hope our discussion there led to some insights for yourself and anywhere or whoever is listening to this podcast as well. But Roman, thank you very much. Roman from Slovakia, thanks for your question and great to have you back as well. Roman’s question is, is tree planting the best thing for conservation? Natural succession gives you functioning communities of trees and shrubs genetically suited to their environment, plus all the species that go along with that. Firstly, planting trees by-passes the natural successional stages that so much of our biodiversity depends on. Secondly, many planted trees are not from local genetic stock and sometimes not even from the same country. Thirdly, many/most planted trees are not properly looked after and many die. Fourthly, and leading on from the above, planting trees costs a lot of money and if many/most die it’s arguably a waste of money. Is it better to reduce the amount of trees we are cutting down and the drivers behind that cutting?
Stuart: This is a move away from your normal subject, Roman, which is, cars and travel and transport. That’s my take on it. Let’s look at it from the top. Is tree planting the best thing for conservation? I like your thinking here. I don’t think it necessarily is. It’s how we do it, when we do, and why we do it.
William: I would say it needs to be part of the bigger picture. Yeah. I think planting trees is a good idea.
Stuart: Potentially, but it’s not the conclusion of the matter.
William: No, no. Was it in Truro that we were in, that a particular tree was planted in a particular location.
Stuart: Oh yeah, yeah.
William: And it was a horse chestnut tree. And it was that that probably isn’t the best place for horse chestnut tree, but it’s going to get huge and just take over the entire area.
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Stuart: But people thought, a tree, great, fantastic, but think about the ecosystem. What Roman’s talking about here, the natural succession gives functioning communities of trees and shrubs genetically suited to their environment, plus all the species that go along with that. Now what I think, Roman, you’re hinting at is when you get a natural piece of woodland. A piece of land starts off as grassland, then you get colonized by scrubland, which is small trees and shrubs, and then you’ll get taller trees coming in and it will turn into heathland and then it will turn into woodland and then it will turn into climax woodland after about three or four hundred years because certain trees like ashes and oaks, they will come up and dominate and then can kill off everything underneath and then when they die it all goes back to the beginning. So that successional biodiversity is lost, because if we’re planting, we’re actually jumping, trying to give woodlands a helping hand in planting the trees that would come about 30-40 years later, maybe 100 years later. There’s a layer of biodiversity in life that’s missing. So yeah, it does need thinking about. Natural succession is an important thing. There is a book up on the shelf called The Hidden Life of Trees, and that talks about if you get a (I talk about this in the corporate workshops we do out in nature). If (I’m not suggesting you do this), if you get an ancient forest and you cut it down and you dig the roots up, all those trees are connected, so the stronger trees make themselves slightly weaker by feeding the weaker trees, which makes them slightly stronger. So as a whole, it’s one big organism because the roots are all entwined. And I say that with corporate workshops saying when you’re working as a team, it’s not about the strongest being up there and the weakest being down here, you need the stronger to make themselves weaker to make the weaker stronger and as a group you’re stronger.
William: And in many different ways as well. So, it’s not just a matter of one person’s strong, one person’s weak, it’s the fact that one person’s strong in a particular place and somebody’s strong in another place. And their weaknesses and strengths, might actually mirror each other.
Stuart: Now, but when you plant a woodland and say you cut it down 200 years later, those roots have not connected, so a self-sown woodland that’s naturally colonised is a much healthier ecosystem because the roots are all connected.
William: I was going to say that that succession of communities turning from trees to shrubs to forests doesn’t always happen everywhere, but what that means, is it’s allowed to if it can. But what it would do is that you would actually end up with parts that are not wooded and other parts that are wooded, and then you have these great bits between. So, life often is on the edges of these places, isn’t it? So, we have long grass next to short grass, the life is between those two bits. The prey are popping out to eat something and going back in again. You get the same with hedgerows. You get the same with woodland. When you really want to see some birds, go to the edge of the wood and you hear them. That’s where they mark their territory. So, it’s not just a matter of the goal of having really good woodland, it’s also just having a greater diversity of environments.
Stuart: Yeah. It goes on, another passage in this statement. Firstly, planting trees bypasses the natural successional stages that so much of our biodiversity depends on. Yes, exactly. When you’re planting, you’re playing God. And you’re saying, OK, well, we’re going to give it a helping hand at this point. But who’s to say that’s the best helping hand? You know? It has an impact, like in Elaine’s question. Life has an impact and us planting trees has a positive and negative impact. And by denying that, denies the learning.
William: I would say that it’s two things about this whole thing. We’ll go through the rest of the points here that he’s made some because Roman’s made some really good points here. One thing is it’s very human thinking and it’s very human time frame thinking as well. I was just thinking actually, the name that just popped into my head is Capability Brown. He never saw his gardens to what they became. He just imagined, he planned them out in his head, didn’t he? But he never saw them as the mature gardens they became. We seem to think that planting trees now will help because we see the results, don’t we? If those trees flourish, oh, look at these trees, they’re fantastic. There’s quite an amazing glade of trees that was planted in the millennium down near Grove, just north of Wantage in South Oxfordshire. And it’s these beautiful trees (it is very monoculture), but it feels like you’re in a cathedral. They’re very tall, very high canopy, very long, tall trees. But it shows its impact. It shows you, oh, wow, look at, this is really natural, but its not really got that much biodiversity because it hasn’t been able to evolve. But we feel that we’ve made an impact, but it’s that short term impact, isn’t it?
Stuart: I remember, about 20 odd years ago, I used to do some conservation work up over at a country park just outside of Oxford. And when we were clearing some birch trees, this bloke walked past, who wasn’t interested in talking. He just said “look what you’re destroying now”. But actually, there were a lot of them up there, but we just cleared the section, and before we started cutting them, there were about 20 different species of plants growing under them, and then when we cleared them, within three years, there were nearly 500 different species of plants growing. So, it’s that diversity. It’s sort of like we need to have these conversations and not be too protectionist.
William: So, Roman’s next point, secondly, many planted trees are not from local genetic stock and sometimes not even from the same country. It’s not something I’ve actually considered, where the trees are coming from.
Stuart: A lot of trees are imported.
William: It makes sense because it’s obviously about cost, isn’t it?
Stuart: It’s about cost. It’s the effectiveness and the supply. I mean disease gets transferred around. It’s like Dutch Elm disease in the UK. That really killed off most of our Elm trees in the 70s and 80s, but that’s because, genetically, most of the Elm trees in this country are the same tree because they are cutting root cuttings from the same [type] and that’s how they propagated most effectively, because they send up suckers. So, they’re genetically too narrow, but actually those trees are all still alive. The roots are all still down there. Well, most are still down there because you get the regrowth, and they live for about four years. And then they get the Elm disease again, and then it kills those growths back, but the roots are still down there. Then the next generation of suckers will come up. And the reason they live for about four years is because the beetle that spreads the virus, this bacteria/fungus, whatever it is, it’s flying at that height, so when the Elm tree gets to about four years old, the beetles find it, and then it spreads the disease. But those roots are all still down there and they reckon it will take one generation of Elm trees to become immune to Dutch Elm disease. Unfortunately, a generation of Elm trees is 400 years. So, we’ve got another 370/360 odd years to go before we see our Elm trees come back. But the point there is, genetically, we’re very efficient at propagating plants, but the genetic makeup is maybe too narrow, so they’re not immune. It’s like roses. People want to grow roses that don’t suffer with black spot, various funguses, and greenfly. Most insects find their host plant by smell, so the roses aren’t as fragrant as they used to be, as they were years ago in our grandparents’ days because the insects would find the roses through smell. The smell has been bred out of them. So, they don’t smell anymore, but they’re more effective at fighting off disease. But genetically they’re much narrower.
William: Do you want to do the third point?
Stuart: Thirdly, Roman says, many/most planted trees are not properly looked after and many die. There is a lot of cynicism when you get all these developments going up and, oh, where are we going to put these trees in. If you look next to the Water Eaton Park & Ride in Kidlington, loads of trees are planted around there and most by the entrance and most of them just haven’t survived. But nobody’s noticing. And if you raised that, oh we’ll put some trees in somewhere else. We have to look after these darn things.
William: And why do we just have to plant trees? Yeah, I mean, just have a little bit more diversity. And actually green space is really good for us anyway. And it doesn’t have to just be [trees]. I mean, trees are fantastic. And we’re going to go through the 4th point here as well. I want to come back to a more positive thinking about trees because trees aren’t bad things, are they? But fourthly, and this is Roman’s point, of course, fourthly, and leading on from the above, planting trees cost a lot of money, and if many/most die, it’s arguably a waste of money. Yeah, it is, isn’t it?
Stuart: Yeah. So, we’re doing short-term thinking and turning a blind eye. And then somebody else will come and say well let’s plant some more trees, that didn’t work. Let’s plant some more trees. We’re not learning.
© Dave Gardner Creative/National Forest Foundation
William: Yeah. And it concludes, is it better to reduce the amount of trees we are cutting down and the drivers behind that cutting?
Stuart: That’s another angle.
William: I mean cutting down a tree that is evidently going to potentially cause issues (fall apart, drop branches on people, that type of thing), we do need to protect ourselves in some ways. But trees sometimes will be cut down because they’re just in the way.
Stuart: Yeah, but in the Plain Roundabout, just before Christmas, in Oxford…
William: That’s exactly the tree I was talking about.
Stuart: Yeah. They took a tree down there and you know, is that just health and safety gone mad? I do know the tree officer for Oxford City Council, you know, his hearts in the right place. But, you know, and you get caught up in bureaucracy and procedure and health and safety and job protectionism, and you know, are you doing the right thing?
William: But I want to finish this episode off just because we’ve gone through it all and there’s some really good points here from Roman and that we in so many ways we agree with them, I would say, Stuart? But what are the positives about growing trees? Sometimes it’s harder to come up with positives than it is to come with negatives.
Stuart: Talking about a negative, I was talking to a woman the other day. There’s only one or two people I’ve ever met that didn’t feel uncomfortable out in nature. And she said, “yeah, I do like trees”, but she said “I saw that tree yesterday. It’s not doing anything different today than it was yesterday. Why do I need to see it a second time?” I think trees, we’re obsessed with them because they give us a sense of permanence and also give us a sense of impermanence when you see parts of the woods and jungles cleared. Actually, the Sycamore Gap…
William: Yes, that’s a very interesting story, because for me it says, well a lot of people actually got very upset about that tree being cut down.
Stuart: It’s in the Yorkshire, isn’t it? Oh yeah Hadrian’s Wall. There was a Sycamore last year. It had been growing for 2-3 hundred years in this valley by Hadrian’s Wall, on the boundary between England and Scotland. Or the ancient boundary. Not the current one. And the current ones marked up, by empty whisky bottles, ha-ha. Anyway, I shouldn’t say that. Anyway, so somebody cut it down, but I think that root would regrow, you know, if it’s left,
William: But it’s an interesting example of people getting upset about, you know, a person getting upset about a particular tree being cut down yet so many trees are cut down anyway. It was almost like it was a national treasure. One tree was this national treasure.
Stuart: I think it comes down to permanence again.
William: Yes, I do want to come back to that positivity thing, but I will just make one point about that Sycamore Gap tree. There was a 1992 film, I think it was, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves and they used that tree. And once I found out where it actually was, I was thinking, why are they even going there, because they’re supposed to be going to Nottingham. So, there’s one scene where they land quite clearly by the Seven Sisters, which a beachhead on the South Coast near Eastbourne. And they’re supposed to be going to Nottingham. And one of the next scenes there was Hadrian’s Wall, and I was like, they’ve gone too far north, they’ve missed Nottingham, so they have to double back.
Stuart: It’s a little bit like watching Inspector Morse as he goes through Oxford.
William: You can’t turn that way. You can’t park there. That road doesn’t lead into that road.
Stuart: Yeah. Positive, well, I think it gives us a sense of permanence. It gives us a sense of where we stand in the world, but also, we’re unhealthily glued to that sense of permanence.
William: It also gives shade as well.
Stuart: It gives shade, but I just think now we need to think of that…
William: it brings movement to a space?
Stuart: It does. But I think we need to, when we think of a positive agenda, let’s just broadly understand why we’re moving away from trees. Include them because trees have an important role to play, but they’re not the answer on their own. That’s the most positive thing I can say about trees. If you don’t have them, your fucked. If you plant too many of them, your fucked.
William: If you plant something, you know, plant a tree, but then plant something else as well. I mean, you think about how places are managed, like how nature reserves are managed, that people are trying to get that to be a particular type of environment again, trying to encourage it into a particular type of environment. Trees would be part of that puzzle, right. Potentially part of that puzzle, depending on what you’re actually trying to create.
Stuart: We had Warneford Meadows along here, and the conversation, when they wanted to set up a management plan, I said, what do you want to preserve? How it used to be? How it is? Or how you want it to look in the future? And they still haven’t answered that question. Now they’re still fighting about what should be done.
William: I think the biggest win for that was the fact it was never built on.
Stuart: No, exactly. And it was right next to a mental health facility which you have thought they would have understood the benefit of being green.
William: Also, there’s an elderly care home as well.
Stuart: Yeah. But they’re talking about moving that. They’re going to be moving with the Warneford Hospital somewhere else. And that’s going to be a science research, study centre for Oxford University. Interesting. Anyway, so that’s another episode of The People’s Countryside Environment Debate Podcast with him.
William: William Mankelow. Thanks very much for being with us. And thanks for tuning in. You always tell me off for saying tuning in. Not a radio, is it? Thanks for listening in to this podcast. We really appreciate everybody who listens to this podcast.
Stuart: And I’m Stuart, the Wildman, Mabbutt, the other co-host. We’ll be back soon. The next two questions are coming from Iris in Whitley Rocks and Fanaka in Kenya.
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