At 9:46 a.m. on Sept. 28, 2023, police officers in Northumbria, England, received a call about an unusual crime. A majestic, broad-leaved sycamore tree that had stood for some 150 years in a dip along Hadrian’s Wall had been cut down. By the time the first officer arrived on the scene two hours later, several local people had gathered at the site, and news of the destruction was spreading. Body-cam footage recorded by a local police officer, Peter Borini, showed him cordoning off the felled tree with blue and white police tape. The gray trunk had been sheared off close to the base, and the rest of the trunk and its dense canopy of leaves lay where it fell, sprawled over a portion of Hadrian’s Wall, the Roman fortification that stretches 70 miles across northern England.
