A Personal View - From Zero to Hero - the Sycamore Gap.

Shhh don't mention Nuclear industry destruction of Ancient Woodland, Semi-Natural Woodland, Riverside Trees etc

Sizewell - Coronation Wood Destroyed This ongoing woodland clearance is repeated across ALL nuclear sites for building and for creating ever larger "sterile zones" as the radioactive plant expands midas-like to accomodate ever more nuclear sprawl. If there are rivers running through or nearby, the riverside trees are felled and the river straightened and concreted to allow for the discharges/contaminated run off to run through the site faster.

The enormous press coverage over the felled Sycamore at Hadrians Wall is truly astounding. Especially given the humble yet mighty Sycamore's everyday abuse in UK conservation circles. As a "non-native" it is routinely stripped out of woodlands by enthusiastic volunteers "rewilding" their native woodlands. It is so very sad that the Sycamore Gap tree was felled and there are conspiracy theories abounding about the professional job that was made of the felling.

I have just read an article in the Guardian that leaves me a bit cold - Robert MacFarlane the nature writer says: "The felling of the Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall symbolises a wider attack on nature in the UK, according to an award-winning landscape writer and poet.

Robert Macfarlane said the sight of the downed 300-year-old tree made him and many others feel sick. “I just see this as part of a piece with a much broader hostile environment towards the living world in this country,” he told the BBC."

Yes - well - the public are far from hostile to the natural world as Robert MacFarlane must has found in the phenomenal sales of his lyrical nature books. Incredibly Robert Macfarlane is a key player in the Government's rebranding of new nuclear wastes and has even taken money off the industry to take part in a well heeled art project called "Deep Time" on the West Coast of Cumbria largely sponsored by Sellafield (ie taxpayer money). The nuclear industry have felled ancient woodland after ancient woodland to further their ambitions - this has NEVER been flagged up by MacFarlane but in his book "Underland, a Deep Time Journey" his essay on nuclear wastes ends with the suggestion that we would be "good ancestors" by burying hot nuclear wastes deep underground. There are no questions posed by MacFarlane about the push for new nuclear wastes which seems rather a high level omission for a book concerning itself with the ethics of being "good ancestors." Here in Cumbria the target area for a deep sub-sea nuclear dump is adjacent to the coastal art project of the same name as MacFarlane's nuclear waste essay ie "Deep Time." Robert MacFarlane's grief over the Sycamore may be genuine enough but what about the poet's goodwill towards the tree destroying (and more) nuclear industry is that genuine too? Its a conundrum.