BBC Farming Today a ragwort falsehood and a fool

Once again I am blogging my honest opinions on ragwort and people spreading hysteria. Today is Christmas day, which I am spending with my family but I actually wrote almost all of this some days ago. I've been a bit under the weather for a few days. Nothing serious, as we all feel the need to say these days, but I was a bit  feverish for a while after my booster vaccination. This is worth getting despite that and I urge you all to get vaccinated.

Just in case you haven't encountered me before I work with conservation organisations debunking the nonsense over ragwort, not just because the plant is one of our most ecologically important in its own right but the unwarrented fuss and hysteria has deleterious effects on all grassland conservtion. A while ago before this dreaded plague came to dominate the lives of everyone I was at a conservation event and a very senior and highly respected conservationist introduced me to someone as "Britain;s leading expert on the ragwort issue."

 Some months ago there were two episodes of BBC Farming Today that covered ragwort. The first featured a load of nonsense from an equine charity. It was the usual nonsense.  Unsurprisingly there were complaints about it. This led to the first piece of bias. In the past they have used Matt Shardlow CEO of  Buglife who will not hesitate to debunk the nonsense. Instead, they used an academic in response to the propagandist who , it seems was unaware of the nature of the propaganda.

Over the years there have been a lot of problems with the media generally repeating nonsense. The BBC is a problem, and they will at all costs it seems avoid ever conceding, despite the evidence, that they got things wrong.

One of the issues is a lack of scientific literacy and critical thinking. The British Horse Society will publish one of their rigged surveys drawing a silly conclusion and the BBC will repeat it. Getting them to admit they got it wrong is hard. On this occasion I think anyone reasonable will think they have been caught out at lying.

It involves a clueless person, a member of the public who stubbornly refused to admit she was wrong despite being told so with good evidence.

One of the basic problems here is that she lacks what the scientists who study it call metacognition, this is a scientists word and very typically half Greek and half Latin but it is really quite easy to understand. It means thinking about thinking or knowing about knowing. She lacks the ability to know how to know if something is correct.

She sent this tweet to the BBC.

    Horsey Lady

@carolynhutchin8

26 Aug

@BBCFarmingToday

Fuming listening to all the talk about ragwort being important for bio diversity. It’s lethal to mammals causing a slow death through liver failure and isn’t even a native plant. It was brought to this country by the Victorians. I take great pleasure killing it.

 

This is just appalling bigotry. It isn't even correct! As anyone who knows their botany knows ragwort is native to the UK.

 

How would you know this to be true? Well, there are rules of thinking that people with good metacognitive skills can use. You can look it up in a book or ask an expert. These are effectively the same thing, if the book is written by an expert. How do we know that the person is an expert?. Well we have to be a little careful here because even if the person is a professor, as I've shown, a professor can say the craziest things if they go outside their field, but how about a professor of plant taxonomy who is an expert botanist? Surely that is exactly the person to ask. One such person is a  Professor Clive Stace, a man in his eighties who used to be Professor of Plant Taxonomy at Leicester University. You don't need to ask him personally because he has written a book. It is called New Flora of the British Isles, but it is known to botanists as "Stace". It is the botanists' bible. As its own blurb correctly says,

 

"Since its first publication in 1991, New Flora of the British Isles has become established as the standard work on the identification of the wild vascular plants of the British Isles."

 

Stace of course says that ragwort is native.

 

The really shocking thing is that the BBC broadcast this extreme and inaccurate tweet on Farming Today!

 

 There is a video featuring the character Jonathan Pie which is relevant here. Pie  is a fictional political correspondent created and portrayed by English actor and comedian Tom Walker. He appears in a series of comedic online videos in which he rants angrily about politics. His rants are staged to appear as if they are the reporter speaking off camera before or after he speaks for a live broadcast. In one of his videos Pie describes Twitter as a god send, journalism for toddlers. Instead of doing a vox pop in the street you put something on twitter and you can chose exactly what you want. It sounds awfully like this is what they did. 

 

What is worse is we know for certain that the BBC had been told it was wrong before they broadcast it! 

Saying that ragwort isn't native is a common myth, the BBC have said it before and I am ready to answer people with the relevant piece of Stace which is what I did. I replied to Carolyn Hutchins telling her and the BBC that she was wrong.

The foolish arrogance of Carolyn Hutchins is mid blowing. She is given an answer and told it is from the standard text, but it can't be right because, it seems, she is special and can't be wrong. This is confirmed by the abuse she poured out a lot of which I'm not going to repeat. It is really frustrating that she should then be broadcast.

Of course I complained to the BBC that they should correct this. They have been very reluctant to even acknowledge they were wrong.

The real issue here is not so much the erroneous view originating on twitter, but that it was given an airing on the radio. This is an entirely different platform which, having editorial guidance, seeks to have greater trust and credibility. A statement of fact, known to be wrong, was given an airing on national radio.

The bottom line here is there is incontrovertible proof that the programme broadcast a harmful untruth about one of our most ecologically valuable wildflowers and that they knew this to be incorrect. I know this because I told them so before the broadcast was aired, as we can all see.

 

Eventually, after a bit of persistent complaining I got a rather poor response from the BBC, They put a comment on a website saying "the plant is considered native". In fact there is no question at all that the plant is native.

There is just one thing to add. In one of her tweets Carolyn Hutchins cites as an expert that she listens to . This is, and regular readers will have no surprise, Professor Derek Knottenbelt. 

For anyone new to this blog, I have a section of my main website which debunks his claims. They range from the plain wrong or silly, to the abolutely bonkers. He claims the plant is a problem in South Africa for example, where the plant has never been recorded. For those who have not done so please see this page as an example. Professor Derek Knottenbelt Country Illustrated magazine (ragwortfacts.com) I take issue with SEVENTEEN of his claims, providing evidence and proper scientific references.

 

 

 

Owen Paterson ragwort nonsense.

 Owen Paterson is a British politician. He played a crucial role in spreading Ragwort hysteria in parliament as I will discuss below giving you all my honest opinions as usual.

He has been in the news lately because of his sleazy behaviour. He had been accused of breaking the rules on paid lobbying as an MP. There is no real question about this. Despite the fuss he made and his  claims of unfairness, he was obviously guilty.  This article in The Guardian explains it well. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/03/owen-paterson-his-claims-and-how-they-stack-up-in-analysis

Boris Johnson tried to change the rules.  There was a vote in parliament which he won narrowly, and then the opposition killed it, by refusing to take part in the new disciplinary process and Johnson had to back down.  Paterson then resigned.

Now we have to go back to 2000 when Paterson held a debate on ragwort and made a speech which was full of nonsense!

I'll give you some excerpts which I'll debunk.

 Ragwort is in fact a vile and highly poisonous weed, causing more damage to animals in this country than all other poisonous plants put together. 

How can he know this? There aren't statistics kept. In fact it has been shown that a lot of cases that might be labeled ragwort poisoning aren't. It is difficult to test for since toxins in mouldy feed have identical biochemical effects.

Seeds can lie dormant for 20 year

This is highly unlikely in most soils and even in the worst case over 90% of the seeds would be gone. It is normal for seeds to last in soil.

each plant can produce 150, 000 to 200, 000 seeds,

An advert quoting just the lower of these figures was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority. They are of course false exaggerations.

which travel in the wind for miles. 

The best study shows that seeds travelled hardly further than 40 yards. Of course exceptional events may occur but this is a common plant so they are insignificant.

These seeds land with a 70 per cent. germination rate.

WRONG! That is what happens in the laboratory it is not what happens in the wild. On average each of these native plants produces one offspring. If this figure were true that would mean in a few generations the offspring  of one plant would equal the weight of the earth.

Then he quotes Derek Knottenbelt, This is the man who claimed ragwort was poisoning the cinnabar moth, which actually requires it as a food, and that it was a serious problem in South Africa where the plant has actually never been recorded.

Finally, the risk to human health should not be underestimated. Dr. Knottenbelt said:

There is mounting evidence to suggest that ragwort is poisonous also to humans. The poison is almost certainly absorbed through skin. It is unknown whether it is safe to eat meat from animals that have eaten the plant but the alkaloid appears to remain stable in blood and organs.

I am baffled by this. It sounds complete nonsense to me. Everything I have seen in the literature says that the alkaloid is either destroyed quickly or excreted.  The idea that it is absorbes through the skin and is therefore dangerous was debunked years ago by some Dutch experts one of whom actually has a PhD on ragwort! It is known that it doesn't make meat poisonous.

This is a quote from a real expert. It is by by Dr Peter Cheeke of Animal Sciences Department Oregon State University a leading researcher into Ragwort. In the USA ragwort has become a problem because like many species released into a foreign ecology it is not controlled by its natural predators and diseases. This is not the case in the UK where it is a native and natural part of the ecosystem. He is speaking about sheep but the same applies to other animals and their meat. The biochemistry is clear.

The PA [ pyrrolizidine alkaloids] are not accumulated in the tissues; it is the damage that is cumulative. The damage is confined to the liver, which in an animal with ragwort toxicity would be shrunken and fibrotic. The carcass would likely be condemned because of the liver damage. In sheep which had consumed ragwort but did not show obvious liver damage, there would be no residues of PA in the meat. The PA are metabolized in the liver, and excreted as conjugates in the urine. Small amounts of pyrrole bound to DNA in the liver would not be measurable. Thus in my judgement there is no concern whatsoever about possible human toxicity from consumption of meat from sheep which had consumed ragwort.

I am not sorry that sleazy Mr Paterson is gone from parliament. 

 

New Forest National Park Authority Ragwort Nonsense.

 Firstly I should explain to my many foreign readers what the New Forest is and why it is so important. The first thing is it is neither new nor a forest in the modern sense of the word.

It was made into a new special royal hunting ground nearly a thousand years ago in around 1079 by King William I better known as William the Conqueror. This was the Duke of Normandy who invaded England in 1066 and defeated English King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings in 1066,a date that every British schoolchild is taught. In those days a forest was a royal hunting ground. Some is indeed covered in trees but there are large open areas too.

 According to Wikipedia,it is one of the largest tracts of unspoiled habitats in the UK. It is a 28,924.5-hectare (71,474-acre)  site containing biological and geological Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Several areas are Geological Conservation Review and Nature Conservation Review sites. It contains a Special Area of Conservation (Natura 2000 site), a Ramsar site and a Special Protection Area. In other words a real jewel in the crown of British habitats, an extremely important site.

I love the New Forest. I used to go on holiday there in my childhood. I have several memories of seeing scarce butterflies there. One of them I've never seen since. The glimpse I caught of it there is the only time. It annoys me that it is being damaged by clueless and foolish acts. So you are going to get my really honest opinions about this.

Damage is taking place on the site and the main people behind it are actually the New Forest National Park Authority, who are encouraging the damage both on their site and by disseminating incorrect information about the environment

They are damaging the habitat on the basis of ragwort hysteria, of course and a clear and obviously demonstrable falsehood.  Right at the beginning of their guidance is this absolute howler of an anti-conservation myth.

The ragwort control Act 2003 places a duty on landowners to control ragwort on their land.

It is simply not true. It is nonsense. It is wrong. It is a pile of horse manure.

Anyone competent would have surely looked up the legislation before using it. I strongly suspect that they actually know this isn't true and are using this common lie to justify the damage

This is the first and only really important line of  the act.

  (1) The Minister may make a code of practice for the purpose of providing guidance on how to prevent the spread of ragwort (senecio jacobaea L.).

You can read the full thing here Ragwort Control Act 2003 

It doesn't place any legal duty on even the minister to create this guidance, and guidance it is not law.

Oh and just in case you think it is a mistake and they meant the Weeds Act. That only provides for orders to be made to order control. These are rare and in the absence of one there is no obligation on anyone to do anything  In short there is no automatic legal duty in law to control ragwort

Sometimes we see a variant that omits the word,  "legal" I saw a recent example of this from an organisation called Forest of Marston Vale. Where they just implied the same thing and  claimed they had a duty to control ragwort while talking about obligations.  People reading this will be led to believe the, "It's an illegal weed" falsehood.

All these things, and I am convinced that some of them, particularly from local authorities are deliberate lies, undermine conservation. They lead to  people targeting ragwort where it can do no possible harm. Just the other day I had to tell someone who was growing ragwort in a garden on a housing estate  and who was being threatened by a neighbour of being reported to the council about her to order ragwort control anyway!

There  are lots of things  I could say about animal welfare,. Simply put, people have been scared by crazy scare stories into believing this plant is some kind of dangerous triffid. I point at the example of the Knepp rewilding project where they have a lot of ragwort and have hundreds of animals and no poisoning cases. The animals simply avoid it unless it is in hay or they are starved into eating it. There is actually no reliable test to identify ragwort poisoning! 

What guidance there is from the Government is based on a nonsensical use of risk statistics. They are scientifically worthless.

Defra give misleading Ragwort advice AGAIN!

 You'll have seen me moaning about Defra's lack of ability before, they have described ragwort as being on a list of dangerous foreign plants in the past, when it is one of our most ecologically important native plants

I think however that the latest stuff sounds like deliberately misleading people.

On the page that lists their guidance on ragwort control, they give the following misleading legal advice. There is no question that this misleads, as I will explain. They make this statement:-

"If you do not follow this code it may be used as evidence in any legal action. But if you can show you have adopted measures in the code of practice, this will help you avoid any fines."

This clearly gives the impression that you must control ragwort and follow this advice, because someone can turn up and spot it and you will get fined, but that is not true.

The law actually says,

"Where the minister of Agriculture fish and food (in this act referred to as ' the Minister') is satisfied that there are injurious weeds to which this act applies growing upon any land he may serve upon the occupier of the land a notice, to take such action as may be necessary to prevent the weeds from spreading."

There is no obligation on them to issue an order and there is no obligation on anyone to do anything without an order. You can only be fined if one of these rare orders is issued and you do not comply. So contrary to the impression given you can't just be fined for not following this advice.

Now let us see if it can be used in court. I'd love to be able to defend someone on this, because of the quality of the guidance. It is hard to find words strong enough to describe just how bad it is. The estimation of risk is totally incompetent. It is in fact positively bananas!

It uses figures from someone known to say really crazily daft things. Freedom of information requests to the institution where he worked says they are likely to be wrong anyway as they almost never record any poisoning cases, It then takes these crazy figures and extrapolates them in a mathematically incorrect fashion to say there are lots of cases of ragwort poisoning. It even talks of confirmed cases when we know from the research that you can't confirm cases because the toxic effects are even at a microscopic level indistinguishable from other causes.  In short it is a pile of horse manure. It is utterly, shamefully wrong!

However,  there is a legal reason, why this guidance cannot be used. It was withdrawn several years ago. We know this because the on-line copy was stamped withdrawn and quite amazingly the man who withdrew it announced it on twitter! It was marked as having been replaced with updated new guidance.  The law says that to be valid  It can't just be put back, has to go before parliament. It hasn't!

This is what the law says This is the Ragwort Control Act ( It doesn't make control compulsory either.)

  (1) The Minister may make a code of practice for the purpose of providing guidance on how to prevent the spread of ragwort (senecio jacobaea L.).
      (2) Before making the code the Minister must consult such persons as he considers appropriate.
      (3) The Minister must lay a copy of the code before Parliament.
      (4) The Minister may revise the code; and subsections (2) and (3) apply to the revised code.
      (5) The code is to be admissible in evidence.

So replacing it and revising it with new guidance has to go before parliament, but they didn't do this with any of the revisions and reinstatements. 

We live in a parlimentary democracy. Parliament decides the laws not the civil servants. This would be a very powerful argument for  lawyer to make. It is very clearly not valid unless it goes in front of parliament. 

This is  copy of a blank page in the withdrawn document notice that, despite the fact that ragwort is unquestionably a native plant, it says that the updated guidance is on non-native plants. More shameful ignorance! 

Ragwort Nonsense from Hidden Valley Bushcraft

 Once again I am using this blog as an extension to Twitter to express my honest opinions. This one is serious, of course, in the miseducation of youth but it is also quite amusing. It is a classic example of how you can sound authoritative even when you actually don't know the subject well.

I am not going to post the video in question here because I don't believe in posting false information myself as it only makes things worse, but there is a catalogue of errors in this short film which show some quite serious lack of competence.

First of all let's start with the video's scary title.

"Top 10 Poisonous Plants in the UK | THIS COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE!"

If you are going to give advice on identifying plants the first really essential thing is to be able to identify the plants themselves first.

Things do not bode well with the bad spelling of Hemlock Water Dropwort as Dropwart .

But then  comes the bit where it starts to get amusing. We are treated to a long list of the qualities of Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladona) while Nick the presenter tells us how to identify the plant held in his gloved hand.

The big problem though is that the plant he is holding and talking about isn't Deadly Nightshade at all!

Here is a picture from the video.

Those of you who know your plants will recognise them as being similar to those of the Potato ( Solanum tuberosum) and in fact they belong to the Bittersweet plant ( Solanum dulcamera) This plant is poisonous as are the green plants and the fruit of the potato plant, but it has a very different appearance to the Deadly Nightshade.

Of course you can guess what is coming now, can't you? We move on to ragwort with the following picture.

This isn't ragwort! It is really obvious it isn't ragwort. It is nothing like ragwort! Ragwort has daisy like flowers that peel open.   It is very difficult to know precisely what it is from the video but my guess is that this is one of the larger Hawkweeds a Crepis species. The open flowers are more like dandelions than daisies.

Then we have to look at what he says about it, which is a complete jumble of nonsense.

The first of them is that he repeats a myth put about by the anti-ragwort campaign that has been analysed properly and found to have no basis in proper evidence. I have written about this skin myth before. He says,

"You can actually absorb it through your skin to make sure you're wearing gloves."

I've written about this myth so many times. The best thing I can so is point you to an article by two Dutch experts. Esther Hegt and Dr Pieter Pelser who is an Associate Professor at Canterbury University in New Zealand and whose PhD is actually on ragwort Ragwort poisoning through skin absorption. Fact or Fiction?

Regular readers will not at all surprised to find that the ultimate source is Professor Derek Knottenbelt who I have previously mentioned numerous times as a source of some really bonkers codswallop on the plant.

Then we get this set of garbled misunderstandings.  No one denies the plant is toxic but this kind of thing doesn't help conservation at all.

"This is also dangerous to livestock. Now what's interesting is it's not so much while it's wet and green like this but when it's been dried up and it's found its way into dried food for animals later on or the next year by dried weight it's more potent because it hasn't got the the moisture for the animal to be able to dilute break it down so much because this becomes really quite deadly".

This is nonsense. The simple fact is animals don't eat the fresh plant but they will eat it if it is dried in hay. It has nothing to do with dilution at all.

Lowther Forestry Ignorant & Incompetent Ragwort Nonsense

 As I regularly do I am once again expressing my honest opinions using this blog as an extension to twitter. It concerns a company called Lowther Forestry.

This company, Lowther Forestry, has a twitter account and they tweeted this.

" Lowther-Forestry

@LowtherForestry

Sunny day jobs checking of a disused quarry in the Yorkshire Dales National Park to ensure that there is no growth of Ragwort. #quarry #ragwort #clearance "

 

This quite properly attracted attention of conservationists.

Lowther Forestry's Twitter profile states.

 

"Providing a full range of landscaping, fencing and forestry solutions for over 40 years. Working with nature, technology and people. "

 

Conservationist Bill Ellson queried this asking:

L

Bill Ellson

@BillEllson

Replying to

@LowtherForestry

Why are you 'ensuring' that there is no growth of Ragwort?

 

And he got this incompetent and ignorant piece of false news in reply.

 

Lowther-Forestry

@LowtherForestry 

Replying to

@BillEllson

As it is harmful to grazing animals and an offence to allow it to seed on to neighbouring boundaries.

 

This of course is a piece of completely false and ignorant bunkum. It is just plainly wrong. 

 

Grazing animals avoid ragwort unless starved into eating it except things like sheep and goats which are so immune that it is difficult to poison them. and the law does not say it is an offence to allow ragwort to seed, that is just nonsense.

You can find what the law on ragwort says on my main website.

In response to a flurry of responses they posted this.

"

Lowther-Forestry

@LowtherForestry

Replying to

@Ragwort_horses

and

@BillEllson

We are just responding to the clients request on this one.

 

This isn't what they are doing they are not just responding to clients. They are also putting false information about one of our most ecologically important wildflowers on to the internet and passing it around. They are encouraging damage to the environment. They are also running down their own company's reputation!

 

Let's be honest about it. There is a biodiversity crisis on this planet. We are in the middle of what scientists call the 6th Great Extinction where the ecological systems of the earth are being damaged. Ultimately it will, if it continues, make the Covid 19 pandemic sound like a Sunday afternoon vicarage tea party. Encouraging it to continue and worsen its ultimate effects on human welfare is profoundly anti-social. Ragwort hysteria is a serious issue as it interferes with the process of restoring or rewilding habitats, which is one of the most important tools in countering the crisis.

 

Conservationist Roy Tindle put it well quoting Lowther Forestry's own profile back at them

 

Roy Tindle

@RoyTindle

Replying to

@LowtherForestry

"Working with nature"? Hardly if you are destroying native plants, like ragwort. Working against nature would be a more accurate description!

 

Sam Tiley more ragwort nonsense

I wrote a blog entry about this woman Sam Tiley (Samantha Victoria Tiley) a few days ago 

http://ragwort-hysteria.blogspot.com/2021/01/sam-tileys-poor-thinking-and-ragwort.html

Sam Tiley posted nonsense but she is still claiming that all the experts who told her she was wrong are crazy. This sounds like arrogant ignorance to me . She claimed that ragwort is poisonous to the touch. It is nonsense and is fully debunked in the earlier post. One little illustration.  Our UK ragwort used to have the scientific name Senecio jacobaea. It is now called Jacobaea vulgaris. (I quoted the professor who did this  work  in the previous posting debunking Sam Tiley's claim.) There  is another plant with the same toxins in it that used to be called Senecio grayi but it is now Brachyglotis grayi. It and hybrids with other Brachyglotis species are frequently planted in public places. I know of a housing  estate where it is planted in every garden. I think by the building company. It is planted in raised beds by the seats in a local town centre in the pedestrianised streets. One council even has it as a feature outside its headquarters. It,, as I said, contains the same toxins as ragwort. Would it be planted if those those toxins made plants toxic to the touch? Of course not!

It would appear from her recent tweet  that Sam Tiley is trying to ridicule me and is potentially inviting people to mock me. Before you do that just take care to check your facts. I am an accepted expert on this issue.  If  you want written proof you can google the details of this letter to the Daily Telegraph which I co-authored with the CEOs of several conservation organisations in the UK. Would a crazy person be allowed to do that? It isn't just ragwort, some years ago the US government asked me to peer review some completely unrelated ecological issue. They don't ask cranks!

This is an excerpt from a two page article about my work as a conservationist from Invertebrate Conservation News in 2011. This goes out to several thousand insect specialists in the UK.

"A significant blow for conservation was struck in June 2011, as a result of a set of complaints sent by Neil Jones to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about companies who were selling ragwort
control using dodgy facts and falsehoods.As a result, a load of misinformation was changed and taken down. This includes the awful leaflet that was produced by the British Horse Society and Warwickshire
Council. There was no question of asking them in this case. The ASA just told them get rid of it!"

Ragwort is a problem in hay everyone knows that, but it is subject to many urban myths and Sam Tiley  was, frankly, not knowledgable of smart  enough to know better. worst still she is so  ignorant and closed minded that she can't understand this when it is explained to her and abuses people  who question  and correct her. Oh and before you take to twitter as  Sam Tiley suggests, do note that I quoted three professors  in that  support of what I say. Do you know better than  them?

This is the reason I write my blog. Horsey people have swallowed nonsense and it damages conservation. It is a pity also that some ignore evidence and reason.

 

Sam Tiley's poor thinking and ragwort rubbish!

As I often do I am using this blog as an extension to twitter. It is in reply to a woman called Sam Tiley who according to her Facebook account, which bears the same photograph is, Samantha Victoria Tiley in full.

The BBC TV programme Countryfile showed a very brief picture of ragwort in an item mentioning the rewinding of a village which resulted in her tweeting something.

I'm including a picture of the entire interchange so that you can see the responses to Sam Tiley and so that you can see for yourselves that her responses are irrational.

 

As you can see Sam Tiley received a number of responses asking the quite reasonable question of where she, Sam Tiley, got her information.

Although I know this is nonsense. It is important for me as a conservationist to ask questions of this nature to people like Sam Tiley, because new sources of known hysterical myths can  bring with them useful new information. Since we know this stuff is nonsense and, as I will explain below, it harms nature conservation, more examples of nonsense are useful in persuading politicians that it is indeed nonsense. This is why I asked Sam Tiley the question.

It is a reasonable and sensible question to ask where someone gets their information from. However, Sam Tiley didn't get it. 

 

She had said something silly on line and was questioned and corrected over it.It certainly doesn't warrant  the kind of bad language that was in Sam Tiley's replies.

 

Let's deal with the substantive issue. Ragwort is not poisonous to the touch. As Esther Hegt the Dutch ragwort expert said in the twitter thread above, she debunked it years ago. Here it is http://www.ragwort.org.uk/component/content/article/7-i/13-ragwort-poisoning-through-skin-absorption-fact-or-fiction

You will note that the article is co-authored by Dr Pieter Pelser who is an associate professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He is a world renowned academic expert on ragwort and its relatives. His PhD is actually on the plant.

 

The twitter nonsense from Sam Tiley didn't stop. In response to another twitter user  she posted this.

I've checked and the thread above was all Sam Tiley had received. I can see no barrage of abuse. None of it justifies the abusive adjective crazy. She has continued to make this false claim this but I really don't want to include all of her four letter insults.

The people who are concerned about the false information being disseminated about ragwort on-line are not crazy. 

Ragwort is one of the most ecologically important wildflowers. To quote Friends of the Earth in their Briefing Sheet Ragwort: Problem plant or scapegoat?

 

"Ragwort (was Senecio jacobaea now Jacobaea vulgaris) is an important wildflower for invertebrate wildlife:-35 insect species totally rely on Common ragwort for food including 7 moth and 7 beetle species;

 

 -Another 83 species are recorded as using Common ragwort often as a significant food source, with a further estimated 50 species of parasite in turn feeding on those;

-In addition to these 133 species, Common ragwort is a significant source of nectar for others including bee species that specialise in feeding on yellow Asteraceae (daisies) and many species of butterfly. 

-Government research shows that of over 7,000 plant species in Britain Common ragwort is the 7th most important nectar-producing plant."

 

They go on to say, quite correctly:-

 

" Common ragwort has been subjected to a campaign of “awareness raising” often involving distribution of a whole set of misunderstandings and falsehoods in which:

 -Ragwort has been blamed for animal deaths which were unproven or obviously not ragwort-related;

-Bad or irrelevant statistics and poor and biased surveys have been used to spread scare stories; and, 

-Ragwort has been falsely branded a threat to human health or to the countryside."

 

My twitter feed contains a number of academics agreeing with me. For example this one replying to me after I debunk a really bonkers claim from the same person who started the scare story about ragwort being poisonous to the touch. He is very  modest in just using his name without a title but he is a retired professor of ecology who has studied ragwort.

Here is the leading veterinary expert on ragwort  Professor Andy Durham the sound only video lasts less than 2 minutes but he says we should stop talking about it because ragwort poisoning is so rare.

 

 

 

 

In short Sam Tiley is wrong. The experts she has dealt with weren't abusive and certainly are not crazy. They are people who are knowledgeable about the subject. Scientific experts who know the subject and whose general stance is supported by major environmental organisations who are concerned about the dissemination of nonsense about one of our most ecologically important wildlife resources.

If you want a good example why nonsense such as this stuff damages conservation then read Isabella Tree's excellent book Wilding, where she describes that her important and famous nature conservation project at Knepp was nearly stopped by ragwort hysteria. I review it here.