by Sandy Gerrard
From 1st January 2013 it became illegal to possess, store or use Asulam products. So what? How will this affect our heritage? Asulam is the main weapon used to control bracken. This is important because bracken rhizomes destroy archaeology and the plant itself smothers and conceals many incredibly important archaeological sites of all periods.
The Bracken Control Group set up and co-ordinated by The Heather Trust are working very hard with partners to get Emergency Authorisation to use Asulam in 2013. If unsuccessful the large-scale control of bracken on archaeological sites will cease and inevitably important deposits and remains will be damaged at the same time as our heritage disappears under a thick blanket of bracken plants.
Some people may welcome this development and see the inevitable “return to nature” as a good thing, especially as another obnoxious chemical will have been removed from the environment. The issues involved are complicated and if you would like to find out more please have a look at the Bracken Control Website before making up your mind.
I have seen for myself the impact that bracken rhizomes have on archaeology and how many times has your enjoyment of a site been spoilt by the presence of bracken?
- Only a single orthostat within this Bronze Age house can be seen
Bracken rhizomes adjacent to a Bronze Age wall
The Heritage Journal 
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
02/01/2013 at 13:07
Peter McCrone
Without massive input of effort, huge areas of our uplands will revert to bracken cover, affecting not just archaeology and heritage but also upland ecology and the farming economy. Asulam and asulox have allowed bracken to be kept in check, other methods like cutting and crushing are very labour intensive and can only really deal with small areas. So without a huge increase in agri-environment payments to fund bracken control work and massive increase in voluntary effort we will have bracken swathed uplands in a few years. I doubt many people who visit, for example, our national parks realise how much effort goes in to vegetation control to keep the landscapes they value.
02/01/2013 at 16:46
Sandy Gerrard
Thank you Peter for this supportive comment. I appreciate that this is an issue which is very much broader than archaeology and this is where the Heather Trust have done so much to bring all the interested parties together under the umbrella of the Bracken Control Group.