I wrote The Secret Life of Trees – here’s why the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree was so significant

Perhaps this once magnificent tree, reduced overnight to lumber, might become a symbol of a new enlightenment, writes ‘The Secret Life of Trees’ author Colin Tudge

We need new policies if we’re to save what’s left of the natural world (Getty Images)

Maybe good can come from the apparently senseless or downright malicious felling of the beautiful sycamore tree that for at least 300 years stood at the centre of the Northumberland Gap. Maybe its destruction will serve as a pivotal moment, when people born and brought up in this ultra-materialist, ultra-competitive, exclusively anthropocentric age finally undergo the mind shift that’s needed if we, humanity, are ever going to save what’s left of the natural world, and live in harmony with our fellow creatures.

If we changed our attitude then we, humanity, could realistically be looking forward to the next million years, for starters. That we are now staring Armageddon in the face is not only tragic. It is absurd. We can learn much of what we need to know from trees – far more and of far greater profundity than we ever can from politicians and their think tanks of lawyers and financiers who set the tone of modern society and run our lives.

We can learn first of all that we are not the only creatures that matter – we’re only one of an estimated eight million species, of which for all our efforts over thousands of years we have so far recorded less than a quarter, and we should not presume to strive for “dominion” over the rest as we were enjoined to do in Genesis (1:26).