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.
