Tree cutting?

swanseamale47

swanseamale47

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wayne clarke
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I mentioned in a previous thread (cant find it now) about a lot of brush cutting around roads here in Wales. It seems to have mostly started in my area after a road accident when a car crash was hidden and took a few days to find, sadly with loss of life.
Well jump forward and as well as brush they are now cutting trees all over the place, indeed a whole row has been cut back (topped?) along the A 48 and I'm seeing the same all over the place, theres dozen gone around roads here. This is going to be bad news for the birds I would think.
Anybody know why or what it's all about??
 
If they think it's going to need doing this year, they will do it now, before the nesting season starts, as there are restrictions of what you can do once the birds start nesting.
 
Faldrax said:
If they think it's going to need doing this year, they will do it now, before the nesting season starts, as there are restrictions of what you can do once the birds start nesting.
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IME, they tend to bounce back quite quickly and the new growth is about to kick in soon too. I'm not sure on the ins and outs but as Jonathan says, there are restrictions during the nesting season.

Early Spring last year, a footpath and it's edges that had been left to it's own devices during the pandemic, was cut to almost ground level, it was butchered. It was grass, reeds, wild brambles, privet and young rowan. There wasn't much risk of nesting birds when it was cut back but by August, it was almost back to where it had been before it was cut, except for a narrow band where the footpath itself was and people had walked. I got snagged a couple of times by brambles at face and shoulder level later in the year, they had grown back to that level.

Groundworks are restricted too, a section of river bank has not long been reinforced here over the winter. It wasn't done during the spring/summer last year as Sand Martins nest there but once they were away, work started. A new false soft soil, sand gravel banking has been built above the reinforcing stones/boulders, above any reasonably potential flood level. The hope is the Sand Martins will use this.
 
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The weird part is the local council have been banging on about wilding, leaving grass verges and only mowing the edges of big areas of grass. Now they are hacking it back to nothing.
 
Usually it is Ash trees which have the dieback.
They are very inclined to struggle on for years dropping branches rather than die completely.
So it is H+S but not without good reason.
In practice the contractors will sometimes need to cut more than just the affected Ash to get near safely with machinery

From wildlife and wildflowers point of view doing nothing results in more interesting and rare stuff being smothered out with scrubby growth, ideally it all wants bashing back once a year or so the exact time of doing that is not as important as it might seem.

In the past verges were grazed lightly by passing livestock which kept scrub in check and this * removed fertility * so that the area was more like old hay meadow with good selection of plants rather than woody weeds like docks nettles and cow parsely.
 
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Not a clue why they'd be doing it there. Some of that has been done in places in this country in places where the road get's a lot of ice and snow. helps relieve the ice and snow problem some by opening up the road to the sun.
 
Don Fischer said:
Not a clue why they'd be doing it there. Some of that has been done in places in this country in places where the road get's a lot of ice and snow. helps relieve the ice and snow problem some by opening up the road to the sun.
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Thats a possibility I suppose for some of the trees. Hadnt thought of that.

dcash29 said:
Have you contacted the council?
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It seems to be the council doing the cutting. It's their vans I'm seeing.
 
Yet I my wife and I are having the devils on job to get 4oak trees in our back garden reduces in size as they have tree preservation orders on then (TPO's) . applying to the local council is a waste of time because the guy who come to look on behalf of the council is a wet leaf with no backbone to say what is obiously needs doing. he suggested only removing 1 mtr reduction, so now reapplying for again to get the work done. we have the worst council possible, even the case officer overseeing this application only works 3 days a week and when in is hardly ever there to answer the phone

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIkM3ItDrmw
 
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I'd speak to a reputable tree surgeon in your area who may provide a better way of approaching the situation with the council.
 
they have been doing it around my area to. I went to visit my local canal only to find that the banks and trees and been chopped right back almost to bare earth for the banks
 
dcash29 said:
I'd speak to a reputable tree surgeon in your area who may provide a better way of approaching the situation with the council.
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.now onto third company doing the third application for us. It is the council guy who is causing the problems he sticking to some guide lines which don't apply
 
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Well around 45 mins on the phone to the local council produced zero result, Being passed from dept to dept with no one seeming to know who does what or why. About the only answer I actually got from the parks dept was the usual reason is safety if a tree is dodgy. Sadly this doesnt help as the trees they chopped looked to me in pretty good nick (I'm no expert) yet a tree in my street which is seriously leaning and covered in ivy was passed as safe a few weeks ago (it's leaning away from me but towards another house)
The parks people did say highways are doing some work related to the fatal accident last year to clear up hidden ground where a crashed car could lie hidden but ringing them got me nowhere at all, they said they are highways and dont do trees.
About the only person I havent spoken to is Sir Humphrey Appleby, although after highways it felt like I had. ;)
 
swanseamale47 said:
Well around 45 mins on the phone to the local council produced zero result, Being passed from dept to dept with no one seeming to know who does what or why. About the only answer I actually got from the parks dept was the usual reason is safety if a tree is dodgy. Sadly this doesnt help as the trees they chopped looked to me in pretty good nick (I'm no expert) yet a tree in my street which is seriously leaning and covered in ivy was passed as safe a few weeks ago (it's leaning away from me but towards another house)
The parks people did say highways are doing some work related to the fatal accident last year to clear up hidden ground where a crashed car could lie hidden but ringing them got me nowhere at all, they said they are highways and dont do trees.
About the only person I havent spoken to is Sir Humphrey Appleby, although after highways it felt like I had. ;)
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Unfortunately councils tend to be a bit like that - there are some people who are really good at their job, and will give good, helpful advice, but there are also some who are out of their depth and hide behind unspecified 'rules' to explain their guesses.
We had a loft conversion done a few years ago, and ran into something similar - someone mis-read the plans and decided we wanted to have the sides of the dormer windows covered in lead (they were to be tiled), and insisted on seeing a sample of the lead to prove it was 'in character' for the area. When we eventually figured out why, and told them the sides were to be tiled, he still wanted to see a sample of the lead that was going to be used in the flashings (again to check it was suitable for our area)!
Luckily our prospective builder was helpful and had a spare piece from a job he was working on, which my wife was able to take it to the council offices, but we did all wonder just what the person was expecting.
 
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