Anyone who has ever walked in the British uplands knows what to expect when they come across a dense stand of bracken – nothing, essentially, except for that dark green, all-consuming foliage.
Like a plantation of closely planted conifers, when bracken takes a hold of a hillside it lets little light in, allowing nothing else to grow.
Previously, farmers were able to use a herbicide called Asulox, under annual emergency authorisations, to knock bracken back, but in 2023 this became unavailable.
So now scientists and farmers are trialling a new method to control – though not eliminate – this ubiquitous plant: livestock, and cattle especially.
Katharine Pinfold, who farms sheep and cattle across 400 hectares in Loweswater in the Lake District is one of them. “Bracken is a bit of a monoculture, it spreads and takes over, choking out other vegetation, including grass for grazing animals,” she says. “Animals don’t eat bracken and once it takes hold, there is nothing to eat.”
So, Pinfold, along with seven other farmers in the north of England, is trialling a method whereby they place salt licks or hay among the bracken to encourage cattle (on her farm, belted galloways) to go into the foliage.
"Cattle trample and squash it and weaken it,” she says. “Already we can clearly see areas where they have opened up paths through it and that the bracken is smaller and thinner than it was previously.”
Bracken does have benefits for wildlife, providing nesting space for tree and meadow pipits and nightjars, for example, but knocking it back allows wildflowers and other flora to gain a foothold with corresponding benefits for some invertebrates.
“The ones that are really interesting for bracken are the violets,” says Professor Robin Pakeman, a plant ecologist at the James Hutton Institute. “They are the caterpillar food for for two particular butterfly species, the high brown and small pearl-bordered fritillaries.”
Tabitha Acton, who is a farming advisor for the Soil Association’s Innovative Farmers project, says the trial began in May of this year and has funding to continue until 2027.
“It won’t work for everyone,” she says, “but it’s good for upland farmers with native breeds that can be left out on the hill over the winter. It wouldn’t be something you do with continental beef cattle, though.”
Ecologists will study the impact of the trial, including comparing biodiversity data against a baseline and control sites, doing fixed point photography to compare the bracken stands before and after the trial and taking density and height measurements.
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