Balsam bashing & knotweed... gnashing? Boars Well, 10 Aug '07

Only a handfull of people joined the fight on Friday. Our BCEP trainee division was down from five to just two committed men and volunteer numbers were mysteriously low. However this elite band made huge dents in the Japanese knotweed and Himalayan balsam. I dunno! These foreigners! Coming over here, taking all our land and spreading their seed... Well, of course we don't try and eradicate them just 'cos they're foreign but because nothing on these shores has evolved around these plants so they are just not on the menu. With no natural control there is only us to stem their advance. Today, the discovery that pulled Himalayan Balsam makes for great javelins meant we were really on our guard. From the dense cover of the forests of balsam, huge, long stems were shooting past our ears.

BTW, message to volunteers today: Yes, the exploding seed heads of Himalyan Balsam are fun but this is considered collaboration with the enemy. I only exploded one. And it was a controlled demonstration event.

Boars Well Nature Reserve

We manage a long tract of land known as Boars Well. It was at this site, long ago, where the incident occurred that gave the Bradford Coat of Arm's it's tongueless Boars Head. A bounty had been put on the head of a boar that had been terrorising the peace loving folk of little Bradford village. One man who came across the boar drinking at the well on this site killed it, cut off it's tongue and set off for the town hall to claim his bounty. Another man who had been watching this, let the first man leave then cut off the boars head, put it on his cart and took it double-speed to the town hall. When he got there he couldn't explain why the head was tongueless until the real boar-killer turned up and claimed the bounty that was rightfully his!

On Friday we were eradicating different pests: Himalayan Balsam and Japanese Knotweed. Both these invasive species left unchecked would take over the entire site, crowding out our native species and leading to a decline in biodiversity along the food chain. Because they don't originate from these shores there is very little natural control because the wildlife hasn't evolved to eat them. The elephant hawk-moth has been found to eat himalayan balsam. They do their best, bless 'em but really we are the only thing between these invasive species and a blanket mono-culture of our whole island.

The knotweed grows massive blocking out all light beneath for the gentler folk of the plant world. One patch on our site was literally a forest. We cut the knotweed down in swathes and the council will spray the remaining stalks to really give us the advantage. Luckily himalayan balsam is easily plucked from the ground, roots and all but it is horrendously abundant.

Luckily we had an army of volunteers to join the fight. There were 6 new short term European volunteers, a handfull of people from the student's union, our BCEP trainee division and the usual Friday crew.