'Darwin's oak' to be felled | Hacker News Reader

'Darwin's oak' to be felled

theguardian.com

29 pointsLio17 comments

For half a millennium countless people have made the decision to let this oak tree live, yet - quite asymmetrically - just six people will get to remove it from our planet.

This really isn't too different from the recent felling at the Sycamore Gap.

Absolutely. And well said.

It’s a tragedy that roads mean more to people than biological life support systems.

When all the fish are gone and all the trees are felled then maybe, just maybe, folks like this will realize you can’t eat money.

"When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money." -Cree Indian Prophecy

Actually, recent counter-cultural fakelore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Rainbow_Warriors

That’s why I don’t use the quote, but the sentiment is quite lovely this time of civilization don’t you think?

I really love this one though:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qfFJFgnmJdE

That's a pretty narrow-minded view. You could just as easily say:

For half a millennium the people living near this tree let it live. Then, collectively, through their elected representatives, they decided that the best course for their community is to replace the tree with something more useful to them, the "missing link" in their road network that they believe will improve local transportation and their day-to-day lives.

How else would you have it work? Should the entire UK vote? The entire world?

This is the polar opposite of the Sycamore Gap situation.

This seems such a shame to destroy something unique that can't be replaced just to add road capacity.

There will never be enough road capacity no matter how much you build.

Once this tree has gone that's it, it's gone forever.

It’s absolutely pathetic that we as a species cannot bend our existence enough to navigate around a 500 year old tree during the process of slapping down some bitumen in the ground for our convenience.

> “… Shrewsbury’s road network”, completing a ring around the town …Proponents claim it will free up road space and take traffic out of the town centre, thereby improving air quality, reducing journey times and boosting the whole county’s economy.”

Air quality? Ok.travel times? Ok. Boost the economy? Which economy? When you bypass a town, the local economy doesn’t get a boost. They might get a 10 acre cookie factory and low income jobs making mass produced snacks which can be shipped more economically for the cookie kings and queens.

I reckon there's a coherent argument to be made that the very old trees are more important than Shrewsbury. Put to vote across the country, I think the trees would get more sympathy than the local town. Therefore the right course of action is probably to relocate the town. Or just not build the road.

"It's a bypass. Gotta build bypasses." --HHGTTG

I wonder what the financial incentives for the six assemblymen were to make this decision...

200+ page PDF of the planning process talks about 37 "veteran trees" but as far as I can tell does not mention Darwin's Oak specifically:

https://www.shropshire.gov.uk/committee-services/documents/s...

Disgraceful. Not even ww2 touched it, and the council is forcing a cut. Too many cats in the council.

Can large trees like this be relocated? If it's the case of moving it 100m or so, surely that is possible

Just build the road around it, but I guess that will cost too much, probably will force the construction company to scale back "kickbacks" to the 6 people who voted to remove the tree.

At least that would be the reason for such a vote in the US.

I did some research. It seems that it's quite normal for old important trees to be moved. It obviously costs money, but if it is that significant a tree, they should attempt to preserve it.

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