Get facts straight over herbicide use on moor

From: Ken Cooke, Wheatley Road, Ilkley.

I would like to offer some factual observations on William Snowden’s emotive letter about bracken spraying on Ilkley Moor (Yorkshire Post, September 21).

Firstly, he fails to distinguish between ferns and bracken. Ferns grow as discreet individual plants, whereas bracken spreads aggressively and forms blanket coverage to the exclusion of practically all other vegetation.

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If eaten, bracken causes cancer in livestock. It also harbours ticks which can infest sheep and dogs and cause Lyme disease in humans.

If he has “ranged over Ilkley Moor for over half a century” – as many of us have – he should have noticed the relentless advance of bracken which has accelerated since it became uneconomic for children and old men to herd livestock on the lower slopes of the Moor.

This process started in the 1920s and accelerated after the Second World War. Trampling by livestock, especially cattle, contains the spread of bracken.

Then Mr Snowden attacks herbicides, alluding to DDT – which is an insecticide! The particular herbicide, asulam, used to control bracken has been used for this purpose in the UK and in other countries since 1974.

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It has been applied successfully over many thousands of hectares. Its acute toxicity is similar to that of aspirin.

Generally on “chemicals”, absolutely all the wheat for your bread is treated with herbicides, as is all the barley for your beer, whisky and animal feed, as well as the beet and cane for your sugar.

Little fruit would reach the market without the help of fungicides and insecticides.