02 - Women in Arboriculture - Real Talk with Emma Cockshott

In this episode of Trees in a Pod, I speak with Emma Cockshott, co-director of Treetops Devegetation Services in Lancashire. Emma shares her journey from banking into arboriculture, giving us an honest and practical insight into what life is like running a busy vegetation management business in the North West.

We talk about common client concerns, the reality of ash dieback, how councils differ in managing protected trees, and what it was like handling hundreds of emergency calls during a summer storm. Emma also lifts the lid on how timber gets reused locally and why attracting more women into the industry remains a challenge.

If you're curious about what tree work really looks like on the ground, this one is for you. Thoughtful, grounded and full of lived experience.

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🎧 Huge thanks to Mike at Making Digital Real for producing and editing this episode to such a high standard.

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to the Trees on a Pod podcast. Today I am interviewing Emma Cockshott. Emma is the company director of Treetops Devegetation Services based in Lancashire in England. 

Emma started off her career as a bank manager and transferred those skills into the tree world where she helps with the family business. So Emma is going to talk to us about what life is like at Treetops and all about their clients, their local authorities, housing associations and individuals. I'm wondering does Emma get the same sort of tree questions asked to her as I get? And perhaps are tree problems different in the north of England when compared with perhaps South Wales or other areas of the UK? They're questions which I'm excited to ask her. 

So over to the conversation. Hi everybody, welcome back to Trees on a Pod, the Tree Lord podcast and today I'm delighted to bring you a bit of girl power with Emma. Emma, can I hand over to you for you to introduce yourself and tell the listeners a little bit about who you are? So I'm Emma, I'm co-director along with my husband of Treetops Devegetation Services. 

We're based up in the North West. So I've been working in the tree business officially. I once left my previous job for seven years now. 

So yeah, I just kind of fell into the tree game through my husband who was a tree surgeon. And then as the business grew and grew and he needed more admin work doing, then yeah, I became involved in the tree game. Fab. 

So tell us a little bit about your business. What does, you know, what sort of clients does your business work for? Yeah. So we have a lot of contracts for local councils, housing associations, the railway. 

We've worked on the railway quite a lot across the North West. We've done highways work and obviously domestic, general domestic work. So if you've got like councils and housing associations, railways, highways and individuals, that's quite a variety of clients. 

So is that like a common theme? Like have you got a normal job that you get instructed to do? Yeah, our problem, most normal job is to turn away from a building. That is very boring, but that is the most common one that I would say comes through from the housing associations and the councils. Obviously the railways has its own specification because of, you know, trees within striking distance of the railways and that kind of thing. 

But, but yeah, generally turn away from a building is very often what's put on the lad sheets for the, for the work specs for the days. Yeah. Yeah. 

I get that. I get asked that commonly as well. I would say, right, we had a TikTok that went viral recently and it was about trees blocking light. 

Yeah. So I think for me, that's like a hot topic. Is that something that you hear about a lot as well? Oh yeah. 

All the time. And especially more, probably more the teams on, on sites, you know, when they're on site, then obviously they'll have residents coming out to them asking, you know, is there anything we can do about the, the trees that are blocking the light? Because we're working on, obviously we're working on the council's trees or the housing associations trees, and they all do tend to have their own policies that they work towards when, when it comes to working with light, which are all normally the same. Yeah. 

So yeah, it's often, yeah. Every day, probably every team, every day we'll probably get asked that question. Is there anything we can do regarding the lights? Yeah. 

Yeah. What would you say then is the biggest concern for your, for your clients? Like, yeah. What's the biggest tree concern for your clients? Is it like safety or? Yeah. 

All the time. Safety will always be the number one priority. Obviously a lot of them have their own in-house tree surveyors. 

So although we, you know, we offer tree surveys to schools and yeah, the normal, they have their, their own tree surveyors, which will tend to go out and survey their trees for mainly, like you said, for the safety aspect of it, which is, which is paramount. Yeah. Ash dieback, obviously that's, you know, that's, that's. 

How's ash dieback going in your area? Funnily enough, we were just having this conversation at tea time last night, like you do. We was working over in Warrington and, and Adrian said, I was out on a site today and he said, all these ash trees were looking, looking amazing. You know, they were all looking really, really healthy. 

And then we went to another site in Rochdale and there was a whole, you know, whole line of, of trees on the street that all were suffering badly with ash dieback. So yeah, it's a mess, but we're seeing them coming back. You know, there's been some pruning works that they've been carried on by us, by other people as well. 

Just trees that we've seen out in the streets as you know, we've been driving. Yeah. It's, it's an interesting topic into ash dieback.

It's very interesting. I remember when I first heard about it, maybe like, I'm late coming to this. So maybe four or five years ago. 

And I remember the really like brutal statistic, which was going to be that like 80% of the UK's ash trees were going to die over the next 10 years. I remember that, that conversation, but it, it's just so unknown, isn't it Sarah? I don't know. Yeah. 

I don't know how much you've looked into it yourselves and we can only go off what, you know, what is published on the Arbor Association and that kind of thing. I've heard something recently though, like you saying that you're not the first person that I've heard saying that. I think you're the second person I've heard and other people have observed, have observed that the ash, some ash trees that have previously been looking unwell. 

Is that the right word? You know, we're coming back soon to be coming back to life. Yeah. Yeah. 

Yeah, they do. So it, obviously, you know, it's down for the surveyors to, to keep on top of surveying the trees, I suppose. And then that's all, that's all we can do is, yeah, you know, follow the, the surveyors recommendations really. 

And just keep an eye on the, what comes out on the Arbor Association and that kind of thing. Adrian went on a course not so long ago, which was at Law Maintenance, which is quite local to us. And it was, it was like the risk assessments and everything around ash dieback. 

And we really, we were struggling to find courses, you know, courses where, where can we go and find out further information other than the snippets that are coming, you know, that are coming through. Because ultimately, you know, we've got climbers and things that we need to ensure are safe, don't we, when they're working around trees as well. So, yeah. 

I remember, was it, yeah, wasn't it, didn't the tree council do something and you could like report, report ash trees? I can't remember if it was the tree council, but you could like report something on an app. But yeah, that's sort of, I feel like it's all gone a little bit quieter about ash dieback. I don't know whether that's because local authorities have like, you know, I live in South Wales and Newport City Council, for example, have done a lot of work and fell in road, you know, ash trees that are within falling distance of main roads.

So, I don't know whether that's a reason why it's gone quieter because so much work's been done or being done, maybe. Yeah, maybe, yeah. And I think like you said, I mean, we work across different council areas or, and different councils are taking, you know, they're all, they've all got a different take on it and they're all, they're all managing it quite, quite differently, really.

Across the boroughs, which is interesting to see, but. It is. I suppose it gives a good, oh, it's like a good science experiment almost, isn't it? If some, you know, having a chance to see which method supports them and perhaps helps them flourish again. 

Yeah. What about other stuff? Are you seeing any like OPM where you're based? The oak processory moth? It's interesting that. I'm going to say no, I'm going to say no, but someone sent me a link and I, no, sorry, because it's not spoken about where we are at all. 

Is that something that's affecting everywhere or? I don't think it's affecting everywhere. I know parts of London are sort of an OPM hotspot. And then when you mentioned about looking for ash dieback courses, I know that an OPM course had been held in South Wales. 

So, I wonder whether it's something that's, yeah, I don't know much about it, to be honest. I don't know, you know, I don't deal with any legal cases as a result of it, but it is interesting to see how something can really affect one part of the UK and another part of the UK. Yeah. 

Really not much. Yeah, absolutely. Agree. 

Now I'm finding as well, I deal, or I have historically dealt with a lot of cases where trees have caused properties to subside. As you know, that's where the roots have grown underneath the foundations and have caused them to subside. Now that is historically, again, being very sort of London and the South East based, but with climate change and our summers getting hotter and drier, I'm starting to see instructions on those sorts of cases coming from further up north.

For example, I've got a few cases in and around Newcastle now, which I mean, that was absolutely unheard of for that part of the UK to be a subsidence hotspot, because it just wasn't hot and dry enough. Yeah. So yeah. 

Do you observe any, I suppose, climate related changes to what you're seeing in terms of jobs? I don't think we do really. I don't think it's anything that that's noticeable. I'm sure there are things that are, you know, it's got to be answered.

We've got to be affected in some way, but I can't think of anything like noticeable that that changes. What about, do you get involved in more storm damage? Yeah. Actually, I could shout the storm last year, the storm that we had last August.

What was the storm called last August? I don't know if he was affected by it, but it was horrendous. It was the worst storm that we've dealt with because it was in August and obviously all the trees are in full leaf and you were driving around. It was like a war zone. 

It was awful. There were trees over left, right and centre. I remember the day, I remember it well. 

My first phone call we got was at four o'clock in the morning and I couldn't even get dressed until about two o'clock in the afternoon because my phone just kept ringing nonstop. You know, I just couldn't even have five minutes to just go and get it. So I'm answering all these phone calls sat at home in my dressing gown and my pyjamas, just trying to direct all the teams all over.

And I did a really sad thing and cancelled the phone calls at the end of the day. And I think it got to something like 328 phone calls that we'd had that day from. But you are right. 

I mean, that was a freak storm in the middle of the summer, wasn't it? In August, it was just really high winds. So yeah. So does that go down as like the most severe storm that you've dealt with so far? Definitely. 

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And what sort of call outs you get in there to clear trees that are falling on roads, infrastructure? Everything. 

Yeah. Cars, ambulance station. We had to go to an ambulance station where the trees had fallen on an ambulance. 

Houses, you know, roofs and yeah, like you said, cars, roads. Obviously, we have to prioritise at the time if it's in a garden and it's down and it's safe and it's on the ground, then, you know, we obviously move on to the next one and try and work out, prioritise and work out which are the priorities. Do you do like a triage sort of thing? We do a triage. 

Yeah. Yeah. We're just very straightforward, but we just use red, amber and green. 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. 

Nothing wrong with that. I use that a lot. Nothing wrong with that. 

No, red, amber and green. It works and so everyone understands that one. The one that was really bad here in South Wales was the one just before Christmas. 

Was that, was that Darragh? Sort of like mid-December. That hit South Wales really hard. Yeah. 

Yeah. Yeah. I do remember that one. 

I mean, all the storms, they all kind of blur into one, to be honest with you, Sarah. They do often, but I do just specifically remember that one in the summer, just because it was not expected at all. You know, it was in the middle of August. 

You're kind of a bit more, you expect them at winter, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. What, what difference does a tree being in leaf make then? When you said, oh, it was, it was difficult and the trees were in leaf. 

What, does that make it worse? So, because they've obviously got the full of leaves, they've got like a big canopy. So, obviously the wind's not blowing through an empty canopy. It's got the leaves there as well. 

So, it's kind of like a sail, almost like a, you know, like a boat sail once it's full of leaf. And so, it just seems to affect them. That's my experience anyway. 

That's my experience. That's what we found with, with that storm. It's just, yeah. 

They're just a bit more unpredictable when they're full of leaf. Yeah. Yeah. 

I've heard that before. A similar thing I've heard of like ivy being on sort of older decaying trees as well. But that, that is perhaps a problem. 

What, once the trees, what do your clients tend to want you to do with the timber then? What, like, I'm, because, yeah, it'd be interesting to hear if there's any sort of, almost like sustainable things being done. And the reason I asked that is because I went to a conference down in London with the London Tree Officers Association. And there was a group of crafters and they've bought and repurposed an old milk float. 

And when trees fall or have to be felled within a really small area in London, they'll pootle along in their milk floats and they'll take the timber and they'll take it back to their sort of yard and they repurpose it for sort of furniture and things. Are you seeing anything like that happening? All the time. All the time. 

I mean, every, you know, we recycle everything. All wood production, the wood chip and the wood. And the housing associations now, there's all sorts of areas. 

Obviously they all have a lot of community gardens. So we'll, you know, we've cut a tree and we've chipped the branches. They'll use a wood chip to put this like mulch around the community gardens. 

The wood they'll use for seating areas. You know, logs are donated to forest schools for the children to sit on and wood turners. We were often contacted by wood turners as well. 

And, you know, they'll just come and pick up, this looks like a nice piece of wood, come and take this and then they'll take it and go and turn it into balls and all sorts of things. Yeah. My house is full of wooden balls and nice ornaments and things. 

Mushrooms in my garden and things like that, that they'll swap for, you know, some wood. So yeah, all sorts of things. Allotments.

Allotments, obviously they have a lot of wood chip for the paths and just the usual. But, you know, everything, there's a good thing with wood, everything can be recycled. Yeah. 

Well, it's really nice to hear that it's not just going to be incinerated. The house of associations, like I said, well, the ones that we work for anyway, they're all very big on, you know, using the wood and the wood chip where it can be. That's really good to hear. 

What about, like, moving away from trees a little bit, what, like, I mentioned at the beginning, it's a bit of a girl power session. I observe that the tree world is pretty male dominated. There's, like, do you agree? Is that an observation that you have as well, that you're probably in a minority as a woman heading up a tree business? Totally. 

Yeah. Totally. Yeah. 

And I'd love for us to recruit a female arborist, but, you know, you put job adverts out and there's never any females that will come forward for them. Obviously, you know, there's another girl that works with me in the office, which I'm really grateful for. Otherwise, yeah, it would be very lonely. 

It would be very lonely, but other than, you know, so a few people that I'll speak to in the offices and that in other offices, you know, when we're dealing with clients, but usually they're part of a team that's managing, you know, everything, grass cutting and all sorts of things. So, females in the arb industry, I'm sure there's, you know, there are many out there, but trying to link up with them is quite difficult, isn't it? And I don't really know what can be done about that. I don't really know. 

I suppose it'd go back to schools and that kind of thing, wouldn't it? You know, talking about it in schools and, you know, I don't know. That's the only real way I can see just to try and bring the next generation forward. Although my daughter, we said to her, do you want to join the business, the family business? My eldest son, he's doing a friendship with us. 

My daughter's like, absolutely not, no. So, she's a hard no then. So, yeah. 

Do you do any of that going into schools and speaking to youngsters? I haven't done it. It's something that we're looking to do. We do take on apprentices. 

You know, we've took on apprentices for the past few years now, but we've always been quite lucky. People have always contacted us. So, but I do think it's important. 

And I do think that from an arborist point of view, you know, for arborists, there's not many young arborists around now that are looking to do it. I don't know what it is. I don't know why it is. 

And I do think it needs to be spoken about in schools a lot more. I mean, I've spoken to my children about it and, you know, they do careers days and that kind of things, but no one will ever mention an arborist role in one of these careers days. So, yeah. 

I would like to look into doing that. Yeah. I hear that a lot. 

A lot of the clients that I've worked with have been insurance companies. So, you know, when a tree has fallen in a storm, for example, and caused damage to a property, then the insurance company will generally repair the damage. And I hear similar things about a skill or shortage in terms of the, you know, the trades that they rely on. 

So, there's a big push in the insurance industry to support apprenticeships and to support people coming into it from that direction. So, I feel like it's something that affects a lot of industries. I'm sure it does. 

Yeah, I'm sure it does. In my mind, I think we hear that, you know, youngsters, that sounds so sort of, you know, condescending, doesn't it? But like younger generations are far more environmentally conscious. So, I wonder whether this could be like, you know, our time to shine, you know, like my business tree law puts the tree at the heart, you know, although the tree is at my clients, the tree is at the heart of the advice that we give. 

And I really felt that that resonated with your business's ethos as well. Absolutely, yeah. And therefore, I wonder whether that will be an attracting feature, you know, something that attracts younger people into the industry.

Yeah, quite possibly. And maybe there's a little bit of a misconception that all tree surgeons just go and cut trees down, you know, rather than, you know, pruning them for the health reasons and that kind of thing. Maybe, you know, as a, yeah, like you said, not to be condescending, but as a 13-year-old, perhaps if I thought of a tree surgeon when I was 13, I'd probably think they're someone that would cut a tree down. 

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Because like, if you see anything like on social media or you see it in the press or anything, it's going to be a big splash about a tree falling down or a tree being cut down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Talking about trees being cut down, did you follow the sycamore gap? Yeah, of course, yeah. I've been following yours as well, I've been following all your posts on LinkedIn. When I want to see what's happening on it, happening on there, it was, yeah. 

It's just bizarre. It's hard to get your head around, isn't it? I was just going to say, I just don't really know what to say about it because you just can't, I just can't comprehend it. We just can't comprehend. 

There was just so many whys, weren't there? Do you know, I reckon we're not going to be any the wiser, like, I don't think we know why, even though they've both been found guilty. The next big thing is going to be the sentencing in the middle of July and what the outcome of that will be. Yeah. 

So, it could be a fine or it could be all the way up to a 10-year sentence, custodial sentence. Yeah. What are your thoughts, Sarah? Do you have any thoughts on that or no? I've heard a little bit of back and forth. 

So, I think, initially, they used CAVAT, the Tree Valuation System, to put a value on the tree. I heard that the CAVAT value was £622,000, which, when I was speaking to the press, they were saying, oh, that's very high. Does that surprise you? And I thought, well, not really. 

I've heard of trees in London have had CAVAT values of over a million pounds for quite a while. So, no, that's not surprising. But then I've heard since the trial that that's been, I think that's been amended. 

I don't know because another valuation's been done. I don't know. And that's come down to about 450, I think, 450, which that feels quite light in terms of price tag, that point of price.

I was just going to say that. Is it really an argument of what that value was? I mean, we all know that it's priceless, isn't it? It's not a figure that you can put something against. Well, I don't think it was anyway. 

And I'm sure many other people are thinking the same as well. Yeah. Part of me as the lawyer is really interested in seeing what the judge says about tree valuation systems full stop because there's so much contention about them, I think, across the industry because you are putting a price tag on something that really you can't put a price tag on almost. 

So, I'm really curious to see what the judge says about that. But then in terms of what I think should happen, I feel like a custodial sentence will give a stronger message and feels like it ties the whole thing up nicely. But then I feel I do also when you compare, you know, potentially 10 years custodial sentence with what people found guilty of other crimes get, there feels like a bit of a disconnect. 

So, I don't know. I mean, like, good luck to the judge. She is going to be in the spotlight. 

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It will be really interesting to see what the outcome is. 

But yeah. I hope we don't see anything like that again for a while. I was just going to say, I wish it wasn't having this conversation. 

I mean, that would be the best that would be the best scenario all around. But yeah, just I think everyone just wants justice, don't they? Just yeah. Like you said, I think custodial sentence is probably what most people would want the outcome to be just because it needs to be seen as severe as what it was.

I know that it's put in or sort of lifted up in terms of order of priority, like, give an increased protection to older trees, like ancient and veteran trees. I do come across, do you come across many sort of ancient and veteran trees like? Not really, not really. There's something near us which our local council manage that we've seen. 

But I mean, more often than not, just left, they're left alone, aren't they? The ancients and the veteran trees. But I mean, we've been out and looked at them as a family when we've been going for a walk. But yeah, it's not something that we've ever been asked to work on or anything because they all just tend to be left, aren't they? Left for nature. 

You'll see an ancient tree next to a house or, you know, they tend to be in the middle of a field somewhere, don't they? Yeah, it tends to be rare when they're sort of, although I do have a client at the moment with a veteran tree in their garden. Yeah. And I didn't realise, like, you know, every day is a school day, to be honest, but I didn't realise that actually it can be quite difficult to identify when a tree is veteran or ancient. 

And there's that vet certification you can put on, isn't it? I think you can be, I presume you can be certified in order to go and establish whether trees are veteran or ancient. Yeah. And I know there's an app, isn't there? There's an app as well you can see all the veteran trees, you know, so if you wanted to go around the country and look at, you know, and I know that you can, you can upload veteran trees to that. 

Again, I'm not 100% sure how, what the criteria is to be able to upload a tree on there. But yeah, I know there is an app as well where you can see the ancient trees in a list. I think it's an app or is it a list online? One or the other. 

I think you can, you know, like it could be the tree council or the woodland trust or something. I've got like an interactive map. Yeah. 

But I would say like, I know we've been speaking for a while, but just like one last point I would say, right, the question that I get asked the most definitely by a country mile is about tree preservation orders. Do you deal with many situations where there's sort of protected trees and perhaps a tree that's come down which shouldn't have come down? Yeah. Yeah. 

We, we, we deal with tree preservation orders at least once a week, at least once a week, we will be asked to work on a, on a tree with a tree preservation order. Different councils, again, work very, very differently when it comes to tree preservation orders. There's some councils that will have tree offices where you can just pick up the phone and you can speak to them and, you know, we'll go out and have a site meeting and discuss what they think is right, what we think is right, what's right for the client.

Some councils will send an email and, and have to wait a long time for a response to come back. But, but yeah, on, on the whole, I think the tree preservation order, what's the word? Guards or whatever, how it, how it works. I think it does tend to work, you know, they're there for a reason. 

A lot of the councils are making it easier for us to check if trees have got tree preservation orders by doing interactive maps on their website rather than you waiting for an email. And sometimes, like you've just said, sometimes you need a quick, a quick answer, you know, you might come to a tree and you've noticed a, I don't know, a big split down the middle of the tree or, or, or whatever, quickly you need to know is this tree protected, you know, which is the right path that we need to go down to, to work on this tree. So the interactive maps that a lot of the councils have, not all of them, there's still some that don't, still some that you do just have to wait for an email to come back and helps the situation. 

But, but on the whole, you know, we, we, we try and build up a good relationship with tree officers, which we do on a lot of the councils now, so we can work together and, and, and work out what's right for, for, for everyone involved in them. Because that's what I find like, when you're working with local authorities and tree officers, like they want to work, they, they want to be notified early and work together with you and they're not there to be a blocker. Yeah. 

And that, they're, they're, especially in the sort of, well, as a lawyer, obviously, if you're dealing with litigation, there are two sides, there's like a them and us, but that sort of collaborative approach is, is definitely, definitely the best approach. But do you know what, I agree with what you say when you say like, not all local authorities, because there's a huge variety of how things are dealt, the same situation will be dealt with differently across different areas. I had one person contact me recently saying that if they want to have a copy of the TPO, the local authority that they deal with regularly will charge them or do a Freedom of Information Act charge, whereas other, other local authorities won't. 

But I did remind, or I did remind him, and I told the client as well, that you've always got the right to go to the council's office and request inspection. And the duty bound to have it there available for you to inspect. So I told, I told the client that, and they'd been to the local authority and inspected it within like about an hour after I told them that they had the right to do that. 

And they're like, brilliant. I didn't know that. Yeah. 

We've only had that once where we was asked to pay, where I was asked to pay to see, to see the information that we needed. We, we did only just need to check if the tree was protected, that we was planning on, you know, doing some work on. Um, but yeah, and I do remember getting the email and thinking, what? Well, I have to say that, but I didn't know that you could just go to the council office, I mean, yeah. 

And ask for inspection and they're duty bound to show you. Yeah. And then I presume you can take a picture of it because it's a public document. 

Yes. Yes. I'm interested.

I'll remember that. Yeah. Yeah. 

I know. Yeah. That's the, that's one for, um, yeah. 

One to bear in mind. That'd be interesting blocking half a day in my calendar though. What are you doing? I know it's cheaper to pay 20 quid and they send you the PDF, isn't it? And then at least you got that then. 

I also heard someone say to me the other day, they said that they were contacting the local authority and that local authority said, we're not making TPOs at the moment. Like they had a blanket. We're not making any more.

And I thought, that's bizarre. Like what happens if someone's making a section 211 application, then a conservation area one. Does that mean that they're just going to approve them all if their blanket approaches no more TPOs? Yeah. 

That's that, that sounds a little bit, I've never heard that before, but interesting. And I know, I think, uh, like you was going, saying earlier that, uh, I think it's, you know, the tree offices are struggling to recruit as well. Like, you know, like a lot of, like we said, a lot of the trades, I think they are struggling to recruit tree offices aren't where I know the, um, the council that one of the councils that we work for, he's, he's kind of been seconded to the next council along as well for a couple of days, you know, because he's trying to manage both of the councils now just to try and help them because, because they were struggling to, um, to recruit someone. 

So yeah, I suppose, but that shouldn't mean that we just say, well, we're not doing TPOs. Yeah. I mean, like that, that almost felt like that must've been a misunderstanding. 

I don't, yeah. I don't know. I was, I was surprised by that, but yeah, I said, you know, councils are so strapped for cash budgets are tight. 

Yeah. It's, it's really difficult. It's really difficult.

It's an enviable job. Yeah. Well, I'll bring us to an end there, Emma. 

Um, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on and for, yeah. Let me know a little bit about what your day to day, your day to day life's like. 

Um, I'm really encouraged to hear that about that level of reuse of timber. Um, yeah, that's amazing. So I'm really pleased to hear that. 

Um, and it's been great to speak to another woman involved in the tree world. And I know there's, there are some of us out there, so, um, you know, anyone else that's listening, that's, uh, another woman in the tree world, get in touch. Um, you know, it was good to have the support of others.

Agreed. Yeah. Thank you.