Chloe Ryder, RSPB Sherwood Forest estates operations manager, said the cause of the tree’s death was “complicated”, but agreed that tourism had played a part by compacting the soil.<\/p>\n
She said staff had done “everything they can” since taking over the site to keep it alive.<\/p>\n
“It is of such importance to Sherwood Forest,” she added.<\/p>\n
“We now know that it’s come too late, right at the end stages of its life.<\/p>\n
“But there wasn’t anything more that we could be done unless you invent a time machine, really.”<\/p>\n
Pyne added the tree would not immediately disappear, and as it decayed over the next few decades, would provide a home to many animals and plants.<\/p>\n
Simon Parfey, a specialist in soil microbiology testing – who had been part of an expert team caring for the tree since 2021 – said the soil around the tree was “under far greater stress than anyone had initially realised”.<\/p>\n
“While the Major Oak team worked tirelessly to revive the environment around this iconic tree – and saw encouraging signs of life in some areas – the damage, it now seems, was already too deeply entrenched to fully reverse,” he said.<\/p>\n
Parfey said the lessons learned from the Major Oak would help to care for other ancient trees across Britain.<\/p>\n
“The Major Oak’s true legacy is no longer just in folklore, but in the future of conservation,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chloe Ryder, RSPB Sherwood Forest estates operations manager, said the cause of the tree’s death was “complicated”, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-644516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}