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Bad information on facebook
The British Horse Society is running a facebook site for Ragwort Awareness Week that is full of incorrect information and even people confessing to criminal activity.
This illustrates the reason for proper education on ragwort.
what gets me is that this plant is a notifiable plant and carries a hefty fine if found on your land, yet the biggest culprets(sic) are the councils.how can they get away with it
This is a classic piece of misunderstanding on the plant. There is no such thing as a "Notifiable plant" or "notifiable weed" in UK law.
So this person is wrong. It does not carry a hefty fine if it is found on your land. This is also incorrect.
See Notifiable weed falshood and ragwort law
Sorry, I consider Weedkiller (Blaster) the only possible nemesis for Oxford Rag weed (sic) (why does Oxford Botanic garden not pick up the tab for it's(sic) release....countries are appologising (sic) for wars 200 years ago, why not this?
Oxford Ragwort is a relatively harmless plant of waste ground and pavement cracks that does not occur in pastures. It is true that it comes from abroad, but Common ragwort which is the plant under discussion is a native plant.
Then there are these comments.
as such I have a personal vendetta against ragwort and every yard I have ever worked on has been a ragwort-free zone - I kill it wherever I see it, even in people's gardens - every one I uproot is one less set of seeds to spread, I HATE it, and am very good at spotting it even in just "rosette" stage (before it gets flowers) I cannot walk past a ragwort plant and leave it standing - it has to die.
and
Pull it up whenever i see it!
and again
As I don't know where it is I'll attend in principle, I'm always ripping it up around the village, hate it.
It is a criminal offence under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act to uproot any wild plant without the consent of the landowner or otherwise being an authorised person See This page.
It is really questionable whether the British Horse Society should be facilitating discussions like this when they lead to people saying such things and publicly admitting to breaches of wildlife law, and therefore encouraging by example, people to engage in criminal activity.
This is particularly so as at the time of writing they are still making false statements about the law on one of their own websites and that they have encountered a leaflet being stopped for similar falsehoods. See British Horse Society and Advertising Standards Authority
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