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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

Have you ever been there? The land in that area is rock with about an inch of soil on it, like most moorland - it would not support a forest, it never did(within the last couple thousand years anyway) . Romans didn't build the hadrians wall through a forest after all, the area was already barren then.

And no one is directing me to feel angry - the tree did hold a special place in my heart, I've been to it with my dad shortly before he died, I've been there with my wife(then fiance), with my friends and family, it always felt like a pilgrimage to anyone living in the North East - and the fact that it was destroyed for literally no reason whatsoever makes my blood boil.

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I have never been there and it makes me pretty angry as well. The coward(s) that did this probably never suspected the kind of blowback this would create, if they're ever identified they'll have a hard time moving around the UK without meeting people that would like to have a word with them.

If he’s guilty, won’t he be identified? It’s public record then right?

The adult person under investigation has been named by the media. There is also a 16-year-old, who is too young to be publicly identified.

> The land in that area is rock with about an inch of soil on it, like most moorland - it would not support a forest, it never did(within the last couple thousand years anyway) .

Most deforestation around Hadrians wall started because of the massive wall construction efforts (it was the HS2 of its day, the largest project the Romans had ever done) and to clear land so it could be defended easily.

http://mandalaprojects.com/ice/ice-cases/hadrian.htm

From the article you linked:

> The solution in Germany was a series of forts and fortifications, called limes, which used timber from the great central European forests and ditches to prevent tribal incursions. In contrast, large forests did not exist in Northern England and a great wall was built using stone...

That suggests there couldn't have been that many trees to fell in the first place. The terrain simply doesn't support it up here, about all it's good for is grazing, which is why you'll see field after field of sheep in Northumberland and not a lot else.

It was built of stone but the thousands of soldiers and others required huge amounts of wood, also from the article:

> Using modern day scientific studies of the region and inferring likely effects of the occupation, we can look at the environmental impact of this conflict. There were several major consequences to the environment. First, the area had massive deforestation, which has been confirmed by scientific studies and can be inferred from the increase of population on this frontier. One study indicates that, “it was not until Romano-British times that man had much effect on the forests of the area. Organized clearance and farming in this marginal frontier zone of the Roman Empire was on a scale unparalled in history until recently”

> The land in that area is rock with about an inch of soil on it

Because people abusing of wildfires and a spiral of overgrazing = more wildfires required, that is apparently a behavior as infectious as it was yesterday.

Lack of soil is not an unsolvable problem. Soil can be moved from A to B so we can trow technology at this (and a lot of big shrubs can deal with poor soil, leading the way to bigger trees). The problem is the lack of will, and the never ending presence of criminal activity. If there is cattle in the area, there is a dictatorship of cattle.

There is a long history of human activity destroying the quality of land, and therefore ruining anything they hoped to get out of it.

The Céide Fields[0] in Ireland are the example that sticks in my head the most. Both because something like it is included in Irish mythological cycles, and because of how it came to be known to the archaeological community.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9ide_Fields

>>Lack of soil is not an unsolvable problem. Soil can be moved from A to B so we can trow technology at this

Ok, so no offence but that tells me pretty clearly that you've not been there, moorlands are MASSIVE, the idea that you could move soil there to plant forests is firmly within some very poorly written fiction.

>>The problem is the lack of will

No, it's not. Again, go to Blanchland and Haltwhistle, spend a few days walking the paths and tell me again that this seems like a doable project.

>>and the never ending presence of criminal activity

What are you on about, what criminal activity. It's literally the most sparsely populated region in England, who commits these crimes and what are they? The grouse?

>>If there is cattle in the area, there is a dictatorship of cattle.

There isn't(or there's very few of them), sheep are the preferred animal to graze there, the sheep didn't shape the geological process that created this area though.

I feel like I'm arguing with someone who says that the only reason why there's no forests in the Sahara is the lack of will and not the physical conditions that dictate what the area is.

> moorlands are MASSIVE

This tree used just a tiny part of them.

I don't want to to replace the valuable moorlands by Acer pseudoplatanus or plant trees in an archeological site, but a few thousands years ago there was more tree cover here. Having space for just one tree is in itself a problem that should be fixed. We could put 100 trees in the same location, multiply the number of suitable places to nest by 100 and the ecosystem of moorlands would still have lots of space to exist, plus the bonus of boosting the local biodiversity

That would be cheap and perfectly doable

You have to excuse me, but you lost me - I literally don't understand what point you're trying to make.

Lack of soil is not a cause, is a consequence

This type of tree seeds itself very generously, if we don't see regeneration is because the return of the forest is blocked forever by grazers (aka cattle).

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