UKH

Dear All, a timely reminder once more:
Please take a bracken stick and a bag/bin liner on every outing. Bracken now getting very tall.
Bash as much toxic bracken as you can and also collect as much micro-plastic as possible.

Micro-plastic - start at home in the garden, round the house, then the street, then the village/town. It's amazing what can be kept out of the food chain. There is so much on the fells too. Apparently the bags given out at the recent area BMC meeting are not biodegradable. Equally, the dumpy bags used for rock removal by helicopter are only single use and can't be recycled - a good reason to stop rock staircase building.

Let's do our bit once more. Another thought - anyone else agree that Castle Rock would look fantastic if all the tall trees below the North crag were taken down (prob before they blow down anyway).

Happy cleaning and climbing!

DC

What ?

What ?

What are you on about ?

I don't know much about bracken but micro-plastics refers to small sub 5mm plastic fragments, much of which comes from the degrdation of larger bits of plastic knocking about in the environment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/microplastics.html

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0734242X18785730

I understand microplastic thanks,  just whats all this lark about bashing bracken ? and bin bags ?

Hey ho, people would rather tap dislike than explain what it's all about .  Well done .  I obviously cant do my part then .

I tried a google search on it and go nothing but a link to this thread.

Thanks though at least you tried. 

Breaking bracken low down it's stem can help set it back and over a sustained period will prevent it's spread. Some hills are getting inaccessible due to reduced grazing pressure (& climate change?) and the consequent aggressive bracken growth.

Other longer term measures are available to stop it's spread of course - trees!

How is the microplastic getting into the Bracken ??

'Bash as much toxic bracken as you can and also collect as much micro-plastic as possible.'

I don't think the OP was implying a connection. Athough I don't fancy picking up sub 5mm fragments maybe just pick up plastics.

The call to take a bin bag etc into the hills and collect a bit of litter is a good one, if only the bggrs wouldn't drop it in the first place.

I don't think it's a question of the microplastic getting into the bracken. Microplastic is a separate problem as far as I know, and is causing pollution in lakes, including in the Lake District. Bracken is in itself toxic, and also I believe implicated as a carcinogen. 

It's also the favourite launching pad for tick's to jump onto a passing host. Beat a path and beat the tick's!

Yeah struck me as an odd request.  Your not going to see microplastics without a microscope.

Oh it's just me then.  I thought it was perhaps implying that you would bash bracken and the microplastics would drop into your bin bag .  

Like a pointless exercise like duck and cover.

Totally agree! I don't know what sort of bar steward would drop plastic litter in the hills. Surely, laws can be brought in to prosecute and fine these people. I am aware that countryside ranger services are stretched to breaking point, but there needs to be some sort of law in place to protect our wild places.

Yeah anyway pedantry aside, are you going to do things recommended by the OP or not? If not why not?

Any tw*t can drop plastic bags and beer cans and mars bar wrappers in the countryside with absolute impunity. Catching them is impossible. Education, education, education.

Not necessarily. There are Countryside Rangers in the Loch Lomond and Cairngorm National Parks - I know it would not be a good idea to drop litter if they saw you!

Agreed, but I don't want to be reminded of Tony Blair!

But everywhere else? Seriously; littering is easy to get away with, it’s a no consequence casual action for most people who do it.

Get over it.

I have to award you a funny looking non-plastic triangle award for making an incredibly obtuse post.

Oh a prize .  Wonderful. 

:-D

I now have a very disturbing image in my head of red faced grumpy climbers wondering around the hills with all their climbing gear on and steam coming out of their ears whacking bracken with big sticks catching 1 litre plastic bottles that drop out of the bracken while the bracken screams "Help help we're being murdered!".