Something new, I've not seen this practice in the forest before; a loose spread of just over a dozen conifers set amongst the mixed deciduous stands of the lower reaches of James's Hill have had their trunks broadly ringed by the forestry. Known as 'ring barking' or 'girdling', the aim of ringing a tree is to kill it, or sometimes to stimulate coppice growth, it this case I'm saying the former; removing the band of living bark stops the essential movement of fluids around the tree causing stress, promoting dieback and/or disease. I'm imagining the reasons for using this method are the difficulty moving machinery over/through this terrain without causing damage, or maybe the desire to create dead upstanding wood - once dead these trees could remain standing for years. Whatever, an interesting and unusual sight.
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