A14 road
Competence got left behind in the rush to look climate friendly by absorbing a token amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
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The government agency responsible for our main roads, National Highways, has admitted that over half a million trees have died beside a single 21-mile stretch of new carriageway, reports Sky News.
They estimate the cost of replanting at £2.9m.
Many tree experts say this is symptomatic of a focus on tree planting over tree care. Only growing trees capture carbon or improve habitat.
The upgrade of the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon, cost £1.5bn and was opened in 2020.
A number of mature trees were destroyed during construction and planting new ones was part of the development consent order, the permission to build.
National Highways planted 850,000 saplings but three years later, Sky News has seen an internal review that points to ‘an unusually high fatality rate’ and reveals that three-quarters of them have died.
National Highways point to poor soil and extreme heat as the main causes.
But these “die-off” figures were compiled before last summer’s record temperatures and it is likely more saplings will have perished in that heatwave.
National Highways, declined to do an interview with Sky News but subsequently did publish a press release admitting “an unusually high failure rate among the planted trees” and added: “Replanting is expected to begin in October with the first batch of 162,000 trees already on order from a local nursery.
“All replanting work will be subject to a five-year establishment period.”
They also told us the cost of replanting will be around £2.9m. That’s taxpayers’ money.
Their internal document suggests the replanting plan will use more mulch to hold water, better tree guards, improved topsoil, and reviewing both the type of tree planted and the sapling’s age.
Full report here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Huh, I’m sitting here with Brain-dead SMart tech ( the PC + WEB Search for spares) and get told this: Phoooh! that’s nothing new: when the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker go landscaping / planting…. it’s an ‘any fool ( country yokel / grass chowing guy ) can do job’ Job, -planting trees, sowing grass , but more importantly -MAINTAINING the plants afterwards is the problem. COSTS. NO Idea and townie planners combined with no-idea-Contstruction firms who cannot provide a good substrate for the plants to thrive on, etc. Verges too steep, plants too densely populated, and so on.
850,000 saplings @ £3. plant cost 50p, planting forestry style 50p or less in easy conditions, the rest ? Or am I out of touch or being ripped off in payments for work done up here ? Rubbish plants? Dunno. We plant a Lot of Trees – generally fruit which also helps the wildlife greatly. Jings even the small birdies eat apples! Apricot flowers for pigeons ( pidguns, then) etc and get no hewlp from Gov or NGOs for that. and the tree plants would have cost us around £3 to £5 ea + a bit more than 10 to 50p to plant ( bigger hole to dig ) … and we now have heaps of ASH OAK & Sycamore self seeding – been a good coupla years for that. we even have “Covid Memorabilia” Oak trees! FWIW. just another gravy train, so long as it is NOT producing food for the populace.
Most of my planting experience (40,000 saplings or so) was spadeword putting in hawthorn hedgerow and some mixed native deciduous alonside roads, on a disused colliery that had been landscaped, and on farmland. Roads are difficult as drainage tends to be the priority over tree nourishment, but they knew that before they started.
gee a government sponsored “fix” for a non existent problem does a face plant. I’m shocked.
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.” Milton Friedman
They estimate the cost of replanting at £2.9m.
Better watch out for that ‘extreme heat’ then 🙄
The original report shows that the trees were planted as “whips” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip_(tree) ] inside plastic tubes.
My personal experience with this method, from observation in far distant New York State, is that very few of the whips planted in this manner survive — by my own count, 90% failure rate. Despite this obvious failure rate, the method is still used, almost everywhere in this part of the country.
My read on it is that planting whips in plastic tubes “counts as a tree planted (as required by contract) — and payment does not depend on the survival rate (or lack of).
Meanwhile, Drax gets approaching a billion pounds per year of the public’s money to burn 17 million trees chopped down, pelleted, dried and shipped across the Atlantic to make “Green” electricity and save the World…
Were these trees really planted every 7 cm? 7 cm times 500,000 is 35 km, or 21 miles.
@Curious George, no, – so how many square metres ( ‘cos that’s how they measure area ) in 21 miles and work it out from there. Tree density is:– much more than is good for them and good for us: all those visibility splays on the A9 as example made it a fast and safe trunk road single carriageway back in the Eighties ( Granpaw says). Then the greenblob effect took effect and ALL those trees have NOT been trimmed back: A massive poor quality hedge providing residence for idiotic birds and mammals which like to try their hand at Harry Kiwi ( ! ) and of course then you have lost abandoned motorists,( too sad to say more) damaged trees and more to the point here, WASTED Carbon production in the procuremenrt of this feature + the re-procurement / reinstatement of more poor quality Creature lodgings.
Who in their right mind plants trees in plastic tubes? Young trees need open access to the air with its life giving carbon dioxide. Is it any wonder that most of those planted that way died because of lack of food necessary for the tree to survive. Stupidity compounded by people that have no idea of how nature works.
I drove along this stretch of road a few times during its construction.
It was all sand.
@ivan
The trees would be planted in plastic sleeves, otherwise rabbits & deer would eat them.
@ Adam Gallon.
If they were so small that rabbits could eat them they needed to be in the tree nursery until they were big enough that animals weren’t a problem. By big enough I would assume they would be at least 2 metres tall with a trunk large enough to support them. You are describing seedlings which would be unlikely to survive out by the roadway.
Putting them in plastic tubes is standard operating procedure, I’ve seen many tens of thousands being planted like that for decades, there are hundreds of miles of roadway around the Dales and in the North that have been replanted like this, they have to be permitted to root on site, that can’t happen in the nurseries.
If they were permitted to grow to two metres they would be far too large and have far too big a root ball to be planted on site, aside from which there wouldn’t be room in the nurseries for more than a very few saplings, I reckon at least 90% survive to become mature trees.
catweazle666, I can’t argue with what you have seen but I have also seen half a field of peach trees planted and they were all about 2 metres tall including the root ball. The grower laid out the positions and used a tractor mounted auger to dig the holes for the root ball and just lowered the trees into them. I suspect the fact he was expecting to get a crop in a few years might be the reason for such trees although the place he got them from seemed to expect they would be selling a lot at that size.
I didn’t ask just watched when I took my dog for his walk.
Just to throw the Voles amongst the rabbits: Highland rabbits can jump over 3ft high wire netting when hunted / c hased in desparation ( of hunger ) and can kill especially fruit trees which are decades old – when a particular in-bred individual takes a fancy to it. Voles are a menace on anything up to at least an inch Dia. ( from experience) despite owl perches. and then afterwards, during Council maintenance, there is Hominimotoricurse nilonicus which whips the t runks with it’s tail at regular intervals as it marks its territory.
And of course, on the embankments, there is occasionally a visit from the Haggis, Botuli laevus levus or on the South Bank, Botuli manus diaboli.
I drive that road regularly as I do other motorways. The growth is very sparse. They stuck them in and put deer protection on them but didn’t water them well enough in their first year. SIMPLES
Curious George says:
April 18, 2023 at 5:22 pm
What I saw on that road was trees planted in a stagger a few feet apart and in 3 or 4 rows
100% correct
Stick it in the ground and walk away? Fail.
Husband your stock? Success is more likely, but guess what?
That requires skilled, dedicated people and lots of time.
Here is what self-seeding nature can do on a bare rock face M74 cutting near Beattock, no planting can ever match this.
@ Beattock, I don’t know, but: and certainly along the A9, HYDRO-seeding was practised ( Also along the construction tracks for the Pylon LIne which you see there.) Organic glue with seed and water + fertiliser ( Henpooh to rhyme with glue) to stick the seed on the gravel areas / crevices. But again it’s the continued maintenance which is either never budgeted for, or like road maintenance, ignored.
@Saighdear HYDO-seeding. Thanks I did not know that. My bad!
@Philip Mulholland, no, you’re OK !From my own experience, Glue must be used properly otherwise there’s nothing to bond the seed substrate to the soil and adsorb moisture for continued growth and establishment. the stuff is realtivley expensive. and then of course there is the PAINT – Yes! Oh and have a look at this “racketeering” so to speak: https://youtu.be/ChtJH49NY9I?t=104 (IMO) – but the stupidityof consumers …. Bare rock is bare rock.period. no planting can ever match this. – and that holds t rue. I call it “Natural selection/recovery/what you will” . Scars will always be scars – but it’s the type of scar. TO quote from an article on “Arte.tv” this now, ( !! ) ‘if the means justify the end result .’ -a phrase we don’t seem to hear much these days -and then be careful at that ( what you wish for).
@saighdear, thanks for sharing. On my next trip south via the A74(M) I will take a good look at this rock face as I go by. What is truly impressive is the shear beauty of this multi-species regeneration.
When I attended the public inquiry in Aviemore prior to the development of the Cairngorm Funicular Railway (the one where the proponents hired a London QC who did not turn up on the day because it was a Monday bank holiday in England and he assumed that it applied in Scotland also!), I took the opportunity to study the Scots pine regeneration on the bare sand banks of the new road at Glenmore. The original concern on my Conservation Course in 1978 was why the pines where not regenerating well in the heather at Aviemore, the answer is lack of disturbance as this bare sand example shows.
@Philip Mulholland, may I go random again? – I like some kind of music and duelling Banjoes comes to mind: look at this, Beats you hands down, dunnit! https://www.google.com/maps/@57.6286341,-4.6947085,3a,75y,253.79h,90.43t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sxWBeSKBASJgVzm03Mg90Fw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DxWBeSKBASJgVzm03Mg90Fw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D229.4761%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 , My family was associated with this work , way back around 1980. Lay bare for a long time and then in past 20 years some growth eventually took hold. small world.
@saghdear Awesome, the A835 is now on my list. This would make a superb ecological MSc study before someone wrecks it by clear felling.
@Philip Mulholland, this is beginning to look like someone else’s blog! …Naw, dinna do another ecological MSc study: I’m just back from a Doctorate study trip with a student this now: Oh … what we’ve learnt! but I’ll leave that for another day! Ecology and the locals interacting with Nature and the Highlands. Then you have still the EU influence ( in the blood now) and all t he nonsense that had been bought and paid for over the decades, International trading etc etc. and the rubbish remains to be cleared. When will people ever learn? People will never learn of their own accord – unless it impinges directly on their lives, but sometimes ( and often enough) they have no option one way or t’other to do what must be done at the moment. Those ( not these) City Bums have absolutely NO IDEA what life is like out in the Countryside, away from the “home counties”. All those eco rules etc etc.
SO back to the trees on the Road to Ullapool and beyond, perhaps in th e interests of Roadside hygiene,they should all be cleared sooner rather than later: look at this ( and there was a telly prog on that stupit Landwurdz prog ) where trees have to be cleared from the A82 like around here https://www.google.com/maps/@57.2476425,-4.5381544,3a,75y,256.98h,100.23t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s2hGdcdSEL2NXLXQ3Cv4rBg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 and gurgling coughs up this 1. https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=tree+clearance+on+side+of+A82+LochNess+Bunloit&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 or 2. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tree+clearance+on+side+of+A82+LochNess+Bunloit&t=opera&ia=web
So, go discover new worlds!
@saighdear Let me know when you publish.
@saighdear HYDO-seeding phoned me back, they have been in business for 50 years and although their records don’t go far enough back to be certain their work is mainly to stablise loose ground, so A74(M) Beattock rock-face is probably not one of theirs.
@Philip Mulholland, Been a long time in that “game” – talk about “”Merit” … “gloss over” so’s the Developer is happy, never mind the client, was the motto. Not our Family Business ethic ! That’s how the country has evolved, Blind leading the blind with the odour of some imaginery carrot – smell the coffee? It’s probably quite rank! – but you wouldna know if you were blind…. takes us back to the Storyline ££££££s wasted.
I think the ones you seek may be here https://www.hydroseed.co.uk ( Oh and I’m no longer going to publish anything other than comments on various Blogs! )
Just an addition : for the record, ‘cos these topics bug me! ( I’ve been preoccupied at work lately, and from my travels have this to add).
We see soooh much waste ground ( rock actually with some organic growth on it). City people with NO Idea and too much Pub or Social talk being egged on to ever greater heights of daftness. We hear about that @great @ wilderness of the Flow Country: so big with few public access roads through it …. so who knows what’s really happening there. Anyroad, Trees were planted in the name of the Socio Planet, then were cleared away before harvest in the name of the Eco planet, by which time OIL had been burnt in their destruction, and yet more oil burnt to transport wood across the Atlantic etc to BURN in our Power Stations. Crazy, eh? but wait a meenit, there’s PLENTY of areas where trees would LIKE to grow but the other local Organic matter prevents this. Wind & Weather destroy plants, Animals consume or destroy what’s left. Evolution? …. and who owns THAT Land ? That’s the trouble. Folk would like to plant more treess – for SHELTER and fuel… but it is NOT their land. Eco nuts have Right of way and without privacy on your own ( tenanted plot) …. Seems nothing can be done except by rule of Law, Good or Bad. Otherwise it is a case of “You can’t do this and you can’t do that” … and those who can….? … We’ve heard all those arguments before.
WHat a lot of Red Deer at the roadsides, despite ASGramps saying, there used to be THOUSANDS ( several herds of hundreds at a time) marauding the lands of Wester Ross in the 60’s and everyone was happy. Today, the Deer are fenced out of their homeland and stotter around the roadsides, dazzled in those new ultrabrite Headlights. Whumph and another one bites the dust and we have to drill for more oil to replace the broken Plastic Headlight Tabs, Bonnet & Radiator supports etc. ( F Focus, anyone? ) and so on it goes. Electric cars on Highland twisty roads don’t mix well with animals either. So I’m off to transplant those many wee Sycamore and a few Oak & Ash trees growing on a strip of bare fallow ground we have been working on last autumn. SSh, I’m no tellin on whose land it’s going. Guerrilla planting – Oh I’d better plant some fruit trees too – many assorted growing on the compost heap from discarded fruit stones – never seen so many before.