To ask what punishment the guys who cut down sycamore gap tree deserve?

[JorgyPorgy]

I hope those sick thickoes get a jail term but also hefty fine and lengthy community service , planting hundreds of trees . Punishment to fit the crime.
I think they’ve angered & upset so many people globally that they will have targets on their backs now.
That beautiful tree was 300 y o & would have lived hundreds more. Lots of new samplings can’t replace the carbon sink of a mature tree nor give out the oxygen it did, nor support the biodiversity it did. It’s so sad.

Plant a new one?

A shortish custodial sentence, just for them to see what it's like.

Then a big fine and an absolutely massive amount of community service involving forests and planting trees for a very long time.

You can’t plant a new 300 year old tree.

I know. But my suggestion Still wasn' t as stupid as yours.

Exactly!👍

And you’d have to wait 300 years for if to regrow. Can rebuild St Pauls probably in less than a decade

Their legs? They’d still be alive , unlike the poor tree

Blows dust off copy of The Golden Bough...

"Sacred groves were common among the ancient Germans, and tree-worship is hardly extinct amongst their descendants at the present day. How serious that worship was in former times may be gathered from the ferocious penalty appointed by the old German laws for such as dared to peel the bark of a standing tree. The culprit's navel was to be cut out and nailed to the part of the tree which he had peeled, and he was to be driven round and round the tree till all his guts were wound about its trunk. The intention of the punishment clearly was to replace the dead bark by a living substitute taken from the culprit; it was a life for a life, the life of a man for the life of a tree."

Lashings with a birch 😂

On a serious note, what a pair of plonkers. Huge fines and prison.

No prison as that would cost the taxpayer. Perhaps an ankle tag for ten years to limit their freedom.

A massive, very painful fine. Watching his Range River getting towed away.

Yes, absolutely. They're of exactly the same mindset as trolls. They want to cause hurt and upset to other people for no tangible gain to themselves - except that the knowledge of that hurt is what they get off on.

As others have described so well, it is very far from 'just a tree'.

What if they'd taken a bulldozer to Stonehenge, purely to upset other people and destroy something ancient that so many find so precious - would that be 'just some big rocks'?

Absolutely this. How would people who say things like this feel if all of their treasured possessions were taken from them 'temporarily' BUT with a cast-iron assured guarantee that they would be returned in full in 300 years' time?

In fairness I think it's pretty poor to be sharing people's imagines before they've actually been convicted and proven guilty.

They've left their Facebook page open.

Sadly o don’t think these men are the sort to learn a lesson. I suspect they’ll be laughing about it all which is why prison might be more appropriate.

Two men who really don't seem to be the brightest tools in the box.

Having said that, while I do love nature, there are lots of objectively more harmful crimes that don't result in prison time. Jails are full as it is.

It would be community service and a large fine to be paid back over time for me.

I listened to the commentary they filmed when cutting the tree down. Complete idiots. Then their posts on social media afterwards.

They should be involved in planting lots of trees and an education programme would be useful.

It depends how much the judge and jury understand about cultural landscape an dhow hard it is to put a price on it. I think this should be a case to make a warning to all potential future offenders of similar type.

Isn't that just a formality, if they've already provided undeniable evidence that they did it themselves?

In this instance we know they’re guilty, they admit it was them & there’s lots of evidence but they blame each other

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/sycamore-gap-tree-trial-daniel-graham-adam-carruthers-b2741596.html

Much stupider. Look how little time it took to rebuild Notre Dame.

Cutting the hands off criminals is a vile suggestion or a stupid one.

Your call.

It fits the crime of destroying something unique, iconic and irreplaceable.

Prison because community service is just rubbish.