Great Storm of -87

[Xerxses]

Great storm: a wind of change for conservationists | Environment | guardian.co.uk

 

Great storm: a wind of change for conservationists

 

Experts say the 1987 storm transformed thinking about managing English woodlands and ideas of natural beauty

 

 

It came – famously unheralded by BBC weatherman Michael Fish – off the Atlantic. It roared over northern France and the West Country, howled through Berkshire and the Midlands. Finally, the storm turned its full, hurricane-force, 110mph gusts on south-east England.

 

In the wildest night in 300 years, whole landscapes were changed as woods were flattened, trees snapped and parks and gardens were devastated. An estimated 15 million mature trees were uprooted in what has become known as the "great storm". Ferries ran aground, piers were smashed, thousands of cars were hit by falling boughs and 18 people died.

 

It was widely feared that it would take a century for nature to recover from the carnage. But 25 years on, not only has English woodland fully recovered, but ecologists and conservationists agree that the storm transformed thinking about managing nature, improved biodiversity and revised our ideas about beauty.

 

But in the immediate aftermath came only a sense of profound, emotional loss, says Andy Jackson, head of Wakehurst Place, the Sussex country estate of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. "Colleagues cried. People were bewildered, truly shocked at the scale of what had happened," he says.

 

"It looked like the whole place had been flattened. When I was walking around the gardens with colleagues the next day we got lost because all our bearings and landmarks had gone," says gardens manager, Chris Clennett.

 

The storm was indiscriminate about which trees it felled and which were spared. A lone 600-year-old yew survived, as did giant coastal redwoods and a massive copper beech. But whole plantations of 80-year-old specimens (showcase tress) and giant 200-year-old oaks fell like matchsticks. Depending on how trees were sheltered by others, some of the oldest survived, but some of the youngest fell. Kew lost 1,000 specimen trees that night, but Wakehurst lost around 20,000, or 60% of its entire collection.

 

In place of dark woodland with closed canopy, came sky, new vistas and new ideas about how to manage nature.

 

Many historic houses and conservation bodies rushed to replant and clear up the devastation, but Wakehurst took four years to devise a plan. Jackson decided to leave one-third of its devastated 180 acres exactly as the trees had fallen and let the woodland regenerate itself. It was radical thinking for the time, but is now recognised as good conservation.

 

Today the wild wood is full of life with muntjac, roe and fallow deer, green woodpeckers and wild flowers growing in the glades created by the storm. The rotting beech and oak trunks have become seedbeds for foxgloves and brambles. In another 20 years, says Jackson, the trunks will provide the soil that will sprout lines of young trees.

 

One consequence of the storm for much of southern England was the explosion in deer numbers. As openings were made in the woodland canopy, new, young shoots sprung up that have encouraged deer to graze.

 

Ecological lessons were learned. Communities of trees with different ages fared better than those planted all at one time. Hollow trees proved as strong – if not stronger – than younger solid trees, while those with spreading roots survived best.

 

Few people who knew Wakehurst's gardens and woodland before 1987 would recognise it now. More than 2,500 specimen trees from around the world have been planted, along with 11,000 that will act as a buffer zone against future massive storms. One eucalyptus is now 50 foot tall.

 

"The storm shocked conservationists into new thinking. Instead of trying to protect nature from change, they began to think more about adapting to it and encouraging biodiversity. We now see that it diversified woodland that was becoming over-mature," Jackson says.

 

But the biggest change was to help bury the notion of ideal nature as flawless and perfectly arranged by man. "We recognise now that these events happen every 100 years or so and are part of a large-scale, dynamic process that allows change to happen. We've come to value dead wood more. That's a big change. When I started, the boss would not tolerate even a dead branch on a tree. We have changed our view of the ideal," says Jackson.

 

"We didn't try to replace. Our idea was to try to keep the woodland dynamic. We have learned to size the opportunity for change that the storm presented. You would never wish this scale of damage, but it have us opportunities," says Jackson.

 

"The storm was literally a wind of change. Until then, the thinking had been that forests were stable ecosystems. We now realise that woods are actually more characterised by instability and unpredictability," says leading woodland ecologist George Peterken.

 

"It came as shock to conservationists who were brought up on the idea of protecting views and nature. It made some people think on a larger, landscape scale. The Scots were quite used to having their forests blow down but the English weren't. Biologically, it did a whole lot of good," he says.

 

Uprooted trees at at Wakehurst Place following the 1987 storm. Photograph: Kew RBG

[slack ma girdle]

Nature truely is a wonderful thing.

[Rich2484]

So how many people on here made there money from this storm??

 

I could see it as a use time. How many people started up here buisiness from the storm. I know a few around me that got themselves going after.

[Guss109]

That's an interesting read. I was only 7 at the time so don't remember it but it's good to read about it

[likeitorlumpit]

I remember it very well

Being woken at 4am to go to a tree in nearby that the fire brigade wouldn't attempt to get to (according to the screeming customer). If I'd gone I may well have been killed as trees were falling all round there.

 

I never made much money from this storm as I was busy keeping existing customers happy. Certainly didn't rip anyone off.

What came later was a problem as there was a glut of chainsaws around and loads of free firewood. I believe the accidents that happened with inexperienced chainsaw users at the time led to the current certification trend though I may be wrong.

[Gareth Dalzell]

I was in my first term at Writtle College, Essex. Sleep right through the whole storm. Woke up in the morning to the sound of the fire alarm panel buzzer going off - I just thought some agric student had burnt his toast again in the Dent Hostel kitchen. Then walked across the quad to the dining hall for breakfast and noticed a tree lying flat and again thought somebodies in for a right bollocking from the warden for dropping that one last night. It wasn't until I looked a little further around I noticed the devastation that was all around the campus.

[WorcsWuss]

That's an interesting read. I was only 7 at the time so don't remember it but it's good to read about it

 

I was 7 too, but I remember it vividly.

I remember waking up on the morning of the storm to a deathly black sky, howling winds and the devastation on the news.

As I recall we got off fairly lightly around the lower Teme Valley, I remember the drive to school and being distinctly relieved to get to school that morning.... I remember this because it was a faily unique attitude to my time at school....

 

It was a phenomenal event, particularly for us in the UK because it's so unusual. Pissing rain we're used to, but not wind like that.

But after the dust settled it was just a natural occurrence. All we could really do with it was better learn to adapt to nature. Not sure how well that lesson was learned in the main, or how quickly it was forgotten, we seem to tend towards adapting nature to our own ends...

[Rich2484]

I remember living in the sticks. We were sourounded by trees. Remember waking up and looking for the trees wondering why there was so much light around. The greenhouse was upside down in a field 300 yards away.

[kentjames]

I was 7 as well, and slept right through to the following morning. My father was full time then, mainly doing landscaping and garden maintenance but had chainsaws as well - long before the days of PPE though - at least for him!

 

The phone never stopped ringing for 2 weeks, my dad went out the following morning to get to a client who owned a hotel on the Goudhurst Road, he never made it to the hotel as he spent two days clearing trees from the route he needed to take! I think he was busy for 6 weeks clearing trees and mess from the storm.

 

When he eventually got to the hotel there was some old ladies there who's car had been completely destroyed by a tree - they weren't all bothered as it meant they could stay longer

 

Our house is first on the end of a terrace of 6, and while every other house suffered tile loss ours was seemingly untouched. It was only when dad was doing the extension it became apparent that the entire roof had lifted up and sat back down again! All our own trees were untouched by the storm but I remember the landscape changing - the trees we used to climbed as kids had gone over and were eventually cleared.

 

I remember the images on the news of the forests and locally bedgebury pinetum - huge mess.

[geoff]

I was in a caravan in essex when that storm came in,it destroyed the van,& I roughed it out in my landy,trees falling all over the place.

Come daylight it was carnage,& I found one of those blowup rubber doll things in distress in the debris,I think it had done a 'mary poppins' from chelmsford to maldon,so I shot it in the gob (with my four-ten before you all start),& got to work logging up!