The park ranger who warned the world about the fate of Sycamore Gap Tree

Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers are found guilty From reducing the iconic Sycamore Gap tree. The intentional hoods of the tree on Hadrianus Wall in Northumberland angry people around the world. For the man who was on stage for the first time, it was a moment that his life changed forever.

Park Ranger Gary Pickles was in shock.

Where perhaps the favorite tree of England had been, there was now just air.

When the call had come through earlier that morning, Gary had thought it was a joke.

His working day on September 28, 2023 had hardly started when a farmer called his office to report that the tree was down.

“I doubted whether a farmer would tell us a stupid story, so I thought,” Oh my God, I think this might be true. “

The Park Rangers team was warned by E -Mail and Gary got into his van to drive to the tree.

With every passing minute of the short journey, his fear levels increased.

“When I got closer and closer, I just thought,” It’s gone, it’s gone “.”

He had arrived on the road next to the tree and had to “take it double” while he saw it on his side for the first time.

“It was shock,” said Gary, who got a gaping hole in the landscape.

At this stage he claimed that the tree was damaged in Storm Agnes, who had brought strong wind at night.

“If you look and it’s gone, it’s just … oh my God,” he said.

“It’s a milestone. It’s a piece of the landscape.”

Gary had to investigate further. He parked his van in a parking garage nearby and rushed to the fallen tree on foot.

The sorrow he felt soon changed into anger and panic.

“When I arrived there, I realized that it was minced meat and had not been blown down.

“There was a clean cut so that it escalated.

“Once you realize that it is minced meat, it will be a huge worldwide story.”

The severity of the development situation soon became clear.

Gary reported hastily back to the Northumberland National Park headquarters that it seemed that the tree had deliberately demolished. At this stage there was no time to consider who by or why.

Just after 9:00 am, the National Park warned colleagues at the National Trust, including general manager Andrew POAD.

“My personal phone started to relieve. Messages came on my laptop.

“Once I realized that it was a deliberate act, crisis mode began,” said Andrew, whose priority was to inform people personally before they saw it on social media.

“It was as if you called people to tell them that someone had died.

“On the day I used the expression” it’s like I’m losing a loved one “. We all went through that grief.

“There were countless staff members in tears.”

Viral photos that were shared on social media showed the tree aside, while the PR teams in the National Park and the National Trust worked together frantically on an official response.

“It was effective within the hour,” Andrew said.

Shortly before 11:00 a statement from the organizations confirmed that the tree had been cut down.

Around afternoon the police of Northumbria announced that it was treated as “a deliberate act of vandalism”.

Local journalists already asked interviews on the spot before reporters from all over the world changed the grassy hill opposite the stump into a “sea of ​​camera poles”.

“It is the largest press story that the National Trust has ever dealt with,” said Andrew.

“It was one of the things that surprised us. The enormous scale of the global reach of interest really brought us back a bit.”

The usual calming sound of the vast countryside was drowned out by the clicks of cameras and the engines of employment cars.

“We knew it was popular, but we didn’t know how popular,” said Andrew.

The international interest also surprised Gary.

“My sister lives in France, my brother is in America, and by dinner they had both brought me, so it was news worldwide with such a fast rate.”

Senior management from the National Park and the National Trust spent the afternoon in the Fallen Tree and spoke to the crowd of emotional walkers and journalists.

Reporters collected shocking images of the trunk draped over a now damaged Hadrian wall.

This idyllic, quiet place that so many peace had brought was now a crime scene wrapped in blue and white police tape. Forensic officers in white suits also collected DNA from the stump.

Eighteen months after the hoods, Andrew and Gary regularly think about the day that Northeast England lost ‘a massive local monument’.

“It’s just useless. Who or where did they try to arrive?” said Andrew.

“It is still a large part of my life that deals with this. It is a big gap in all our lives, let alone the landscape.”