Battle to save historic Robin Hood tree after summer heatwaves and droughts
Summer hot waves and follow -up droughts prevent attempts to look at a historical tree associated with Robin Hood.
The last weather is a challenge to the teams facing the large oak in the Sherwood Forest, the Nottinghamshire, the Association for the Protection of Royal Birds (RSPB).
RSPB works with tree and soil health experts to help the 1000-year-old tree-it is said to be a place hidden for Rrin Hood and Law Leakage Group-it suffers from bad health.
The soil around the base of the tree was compressed with feet, horse and vehicle traffic until a fence was established around the mid -1970s, and restricted the existence of water, oxygen and nutrients to the roots of the tree.
The roots of the tree also show a vital lack of interaction with mushrooms and other organisms.
In 2023, the aid organization launched a program approved by Natural England to help save the roots and maintain the large oak.
However, in the UK, the hottest June and 2025 recorded in the UK, significant rainfall weeks, the tree to reverse the impact of the effect of already contributed to the urgency of the work, he says.
The personnel regularly irrigate the tree in response to the information provided by the technology measuring moisture in the soil.
The teams also smashed the tightly packaged soil around the aggregated roots of the tree, adds organic material from the forest to feed the soil and promote biological activity, and then change the earth on the roots.
And a young oak fell and was left to the preservation to release the nutrients in the soil.
Chloe Ryder, RSPB at Sherwood Forest, leading the study, said that the heat provides “great stress için for the old oak.
He said: “Especially for the Great Oak, even at this stage, we supply the best scientific advice and evidence available from tree and soil health experts to provide a plan to improve the health of the tree.
“However, this important task is not made easier with climate change.
“We can already see that climate change has a destructive effect on the natural world, and it gives us a real concern that the excessive air from the Met office is ‘new normal’ for England.
“The Great Oak experienced three consecutive summers during the growth season with long -term drought and unprecedented high temperatures in 2022.
“This year, once again the scope of the leaf shows great stress that it is under the tree.
“A tree with such a complex history faces huge difficulties as it is constantly getting worse with very hot and very dry summers.”
