Oxfordshire Woodland Group

A large standing beech tree (pd 1860) is now confirmed as being dead.

The bark is separating and high level branches falling to ground over winter 2021/22.

The problem now remains as to whether to fell this tree or leave and let it fall over ?

Notes:

The tree is deep inside a private woodland well away from a road. There are no public rights of way.

The tree contains approx 6-8 cu m of timber most of which might be useable but once felled it would likely need to be broken down and converted in situ for example using a Lucas type mill for the production of timber baulks that can then be extracted and resawn into planks on our mobile band mill.

It is leaning and if felled it will tend to fall into a block of valuable 100ft high DF / WRC trees.

The tree girth is 100" at breast height i.e. a 30" diameter and our largest chainsaw bar is 28".

We need a bigger bar !