Collateral damage

Joe Gray

Publication date: 21 October 2025

“A pair of chevron-marked longhorn beetles," exclaimed the bald-headed visitor through his beard of swarming grey hairs.

"A pair of chevron-marked longhorn beetles," repeated a middle-aged woman from behind the desk on which the man's left palm was pressed. The tone of her echo suggested bewilderment and dread, as a minimum.

The man—Richard Forte (with a silent e)—was a retired scientist and polymathic firebrand whose chief concern, these days, was conservation. The woman—Linda Bamford—was the senior (and solitary) ecologist for the Bewerbury Woods Trust, a charitable organization that existed to protect the only large remnant of ancient woodland within a thirty-five-mile-radius circle of English countryside.

It was the Trust's small office that currently accommodated, among other things, Linda, her desk, Richard's down-pressing palm, and the rest of this local agitator. While not the type of building that was generally open to visitors without appointments, these premises were frequented by Richard so regularly that he moved with the freedom of a staff member—or, more specifically, an employee who was short on work. He would pull books off shelves if the spines took his fancy and help himself to cups of coffee from the filter machine in the kitchen. He had even been known, on occasion, to meddle with the control panel for the air-conditioning unit.

The urgency of the present visit, however, removed all distracting temptations from Richard's mind. The word beetles was still to be fully issued from Linda's lips when he clamped his right hand onto the laptop inside his satchel. After withdrawing the computer, he conducted a brief and unfruitful search for space on the crammed work surface of his de facto host, before setting his eyes on hers with an unvoiced request for assistance.

It was a plea to which Linda responded. Removing both hands from the lower curls of her greying chestnut bob—a nervous habit that went back to her childhood—she lifted up a folder of papers and, after making a similarly unsuccessful survey of the remaining desktop clutter, placed this on her lap.

With a laptop-sized space now cleared, Richard set down his computer; and, in less than a minute, he had typed in his password, started up a photographic application, opened a file, and rotated the machine to offer Linda indisputable confirmation of what had been verbally promised: a pair of chevron-marked longhorn beetles. "And that was in Bewerbury Woods?" inquired the senior ecologist, exercising due diligence.

"Yes, on the fallen oak at Long Road picnic site, the one behind that picnic bench with the… um… the spray-painted… um…"

"I know the one," Linda intervened charitably.

"Well, what are we going to do about it?" the visitor asked.

Richard's habitual use of the word we in this kind of context was something that normally irked Linda, suggesting, as it did, that he was an equal partner in decisions relating to the management of the woods. On the present occasion, though, the implicit widening of responsibility was something that she welcomed. At least it helped to calm her anxiety a little—even if it was a question for which no satisfactory answer could possibly exist.

As Richard awaited some kind of response, the senior ecologist conjured up as faithful a mental image as she could of the fallen trunk in question: a mighty storm-felled veteran with limbs removed by chainsaw but the thick cloak of bark still intact. The chevron-marked longhorn beetle, a nationally endangered species, had never been found before in Bewerbury Woods; yet Linda, like all woodland ecologists, knew about the famed insect's requirements. Females were thought to lay eggs exclusively in bark crevices of large horizontal oak trunks. That is to say, the fallen tree needed not only to be an oak, and a large one at that, but to have at least a patch of remaining bark. No bark, no beetles. No exceptions.

With these facts rehearsed, Linda lowered her head to look at the folder of papers on her lap. And her stress spasmed once more.

The folder's label read BSL Beetle Project. And the pages of text inside—as Linda knew well, for she had written them—described the methods and results of a recently completed two-year project to help a species of beetle closely related to the chevron-marked longhorn, one known vernacularly as the blue-spotted longhorn.

The blue-spotted longhorn was an insect of national conservation interest, although not one nearly as threatened as the aforementioned and quasi-mythical cousin. The ecological requirements of these two exploiters of fallen oak trees were similar, other than in the blue-spotted longhorn's habit of laying eggs in exposed bark-free areas.

Linda had gone beyond the bounds of what could reasonably have been expected of her in pulling the BSL Beetle Project together. It had offered a chance to really make a difference. And its planning and delivery had consumed most of what she had to give, both inside and outside of work.

But, now, if there was anything that Linda could have undone from her life in that moment—following her visitor's stunning revelation—it was an act described several times in the folder of papers, including, for instance, in a short paragraph on page 5 of the Species Management Plan:

"Following a thorough and systematic search within the boundary of Bewerbury Woods for downed oak boles (Quercus robur and Q. petraea) with intact bark and an estimated diameter at breast height of 1.75 metres or greater (see Figure 1.5), a list of 10-figure grid references of all trunks targeted for manipulation was supplied to the contractors. Only one bole out of the seventy-three identified was left unmanipulated (the excluded bole was in a location with particularly high public visitation). The manipulation that the contractors were instructed to undertake on each tree (see Box 1.6), with the aim of producing ideal egg-laying conditions for the BSL beetle, was removing the bark in its entirety – i.e. total decortication." ■

Note

My thanks go to Taylor Hood for providing some very thoughtful comments that helped shape the final piece.

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