One of the most important rules of logical thinking is, “don’t listen to authority look at the evidence.” Indeed there is abundant evidence in the medical literature that authoritarian behaviour is linked to poor ability and intelligence.
This is a classic example of a phenomenon I have noticed many times. Bureaucrats in local and even central government often don’t know their subjects well.
It is a case from about a decade ago from Pembroke Council in Wales but it is still relevant today as the same issues happen. These are some quotes from an email concerning a developer who wanted, quite properly, to include ragwort in a nature area.
This starts with a falsehood.
2. The Council’s Landscape Officer comments: “It is strange to go to special levels to include Ragwort into the proposals when it is a notifiable weed elsewhere,
I don’t know what is precisely meant by “elsewhere,” but there has never, ever been such a thing as a notifiable weed in Wales or in the rest of Great Britain. There is no legal requirement for anyone to notify any authority of the presence of any plant.
Then there is more incorrect information!
and an offense [sic] to allow it to spread. So whilst the developer can include it, he will be obliged to remove it before it comes into seed.
This is nonsense! The law most emphatically, does not say that. You may be given a rare order to control ragwort but in the absence of an order there is no requirement to do anything at all.
I would suggest that we are aiming to set something up that is realistically impractical and may cause legal challenge if left un-managed. The Cinabar [sic] Moth is not a protected species but is an LBAP species and hence its suggested inclusion in the scheme.
The main issue with ragwort hysteria isn’t the Cinnabar Moth but all the other wildlife and the impact on the environment of the agricultural intensification created by the problem
There is more nonsense
However it is relatively common, and the plant itself is poisonous to humans although large quantities would have to be consumed to be lethal. However, inclusion in the scheme might lead to concern from more informed parents and I therefore question the overall wisdom of its inclusion in the play area.
Remember this is coming from a landscape officer someone who you might expect to know something about plants. Surely you would expect them to know that toxic plants are common in gardening, things like daffodils and bluebells. This is what truly informed parents should know. Yes there is a problem with ignoramuses and ragwort but that should be dealt with by educating them.
This sort of ignorance is by no means unusual from council officers. I actually started all this work when decades ago a council officer was determined that ragwort should be treated as an invasive species even though I impressed upon her that it was an ecologically important native. It got written into an official document afterwards that it was a foreign invader. It had to be complained about!
Another issue occurred years ago, when I was trying to conserve one of the best butterfly sites in the UK. A small 20 acre site in Wales with as many butterfly species as the entire English county of Essex! One of the tactics was to protect the trees. A council Tree Officer visited and tried to impress me with scientific names, only they were the wrong ones! Also he made one of the most ignorant statements I’ve ever heard from someone who should have understanding of ecology!
“If it were to be ploughed up everything would come back because the seeds would still be in the ground.”
The moral of this story is don’t listen to officials, find out the rules for yourself and be particularly sceptical of council officers and their claims.
