"It was a Saturday in February 2020 when the flood came. It had been a wet winter, so wet it seemed that before the month was out, the brown trout of the River Taff might be washed clean out into Cardiff Bay before the fishing season had even begun. But this is Wales. People are used to a spot of rain."
"Before the Pentre floods, Natural Resources Wales, which took over from the Forestry Commission in Wales in 2013, stepped in with felling licences, drawing the ire of dogwalkers and hikers when they sent in their machines. As the authorities felled and winched the trees, dead material and branches snapped and dropped on to the forest floor. The high street in Pentre had never flooded."
A prolonged wet winter culminated in severe flooding across the South Wales Valleys in February 2020, washing out river life and inundating homes. Overgrown monocultures of larch planted after coal mining left steep valley sides unstable and impassable, while felling operations by public bodies created accumulations of dead material on forest floors. Riverbanks failed when heavy rain could not follow natural courses, sending torrents into villages such as Pentre where streets had never flooded before. Official enquiries found no wrongdoing, but local people blamed altered land management and rising climate extremes and called for locally led, adaptive stewardship.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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