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Some reflections and projections on bracken control

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

John B. McCreath
John B. McCreath
Affiliation:
West of Scotland Agricultural College, Ayr
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Synopsis

‘Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards’.Thirty years of professional but spasmodic interest in the problem of bracken on the Scottish hills brings home the aptness of Kierkegaard's aphorism. Despite rapid technological change —from a man with a scythe to the pilot with a helicopter—the fact remains that control of this serious weed problem is currently running at only a fraction of the rate in the early fifties. Clearly, financial factors have played a major part in this situation but it is facile to lay the blame wholly at the door of economics. The objective of the paper is to summarise the dominant technical and economic aspects which have impinged upon the problem over three decades and to attempt to draw broad conclusions as to why we are in this situation and to outline more fruitful possibilities for the future.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Section B: Biological Sciences , Volume 81 , Issue 1-2: Bracken in Scotland , 1982 , pp. 135 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1982

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