New Forest trees count the cost of months of storms

The recent storms have resulted in widespread damage to many of the trees in the New Forest, with experts busy dealing with the damage.

The authority's senior tree officer Bryan Wilson said his team had issued 160 notices for urgent work in just four months.

During the same period last year it issued 30 notices.

"This is extreme weather by anybody’s terms and a succession of storms with strong winds and continued rainfall has been going on since October with hardly any respite," said Bryan Wilson.

"It is worse than we had even in 1987 and 1990 storms."

The New Forest telephone advice line has been ringing more or less continuously over the last few weeks with requests from anxious landowners seeking help and advice about trees.

"One of the differences between this and the '87 storm is that most of the deciduous trees were still in leaf when that storm hit, so at this time of year there is less likelihood of a whole deciduous tree going over," Bryan Wilson said.

"However we have particularly seen conifers badly affected, such as a Scots pine snapped in half 25ft up in the middle of a row of trees."

He said the New Forest had the greatest concentration of ancient and veteran trees in western Europe.

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