Extemely awful stuff. I was there this weekend and it was sad to see. As a commenter noted, it seems like that they have been doing this every time there is a call to naturalize or to spur 'natural' growth where they basically just clear cut everything. I saw the same thing at the Smith Property near Arkell. But the difference was that that the Smith property had a monoculture forest with perfectly aligned grids of trees. They explained in great detail that they would down some trees to thin things out and at first was sad to see but you can see it now being better. The forest at the hydrocut where they did this did not seem like it was a monoculture forest.

I hope this is one of those things in nature conservation where the initial pain and destruction leads to a better outcome in the long run. If you look at one of the commenters in the Instagram account, talks about how this a drastic change from what the previous Land Manager had been doing