Hands Off Hartlebury Common

Open invitation to bracken
So is the planned restoration/conversion
rate of 1000 hectares per
annum of tree covered land to
heathland (and other open type
habitats) over the coming years an
open invitation for bracken to occupy
more land and help it reach the
10% milestone of land conquered
in UK? (And that’s the best scenario
because many conservation bodies
and wildlife trusts are still pushing
for even more conversion and more
quickly, doubling the exiting area
of heathland to around 120,000
hectares as their goal.) Most land
earmarked for restoration (or conversion)
currently carries conifer
plantations established at commercial
timber yielding tree densities,
which is virtually the only way of
excluding this light-loving fern.
Most evidence suggests that
contemporary custodians of lowland
heathland can’t cope with
the bracken they already have, so
opening up even more land and
opportunities for this triffid-like
weed clearly doesn’t make sense.
The basic problem is that heathland
managers are generally ill-equipped
materially and mentally to deal with
bracken. By nature and definition
they are conservationists for whom
chemical herbicide is anathema.
Anything and everything else
has been deployed against bracken
which is flailed, flogged, bashed,
bruised, thrashed, whipped, rolled
and cut. These are useful measures
in their own right for depleting
food reserves in the rhizomes, but
require follow up applications of
herbicide, and usually more than
one, if eradication of the bracken
has any chance of succeeding.

Steve McCarron