Bracken management in the uplands

Cutting bracken in upland Wales
Ensure that the bracken has no high conservation value of its own before commencing control

Bracken is a well-adapted pioneer plant, which can dominate large areas of moorland. Established stands occupy an estimated 975,000 hectares of open upland and heathland in the UK.

Bracken can colonise land rapidly and has the potential to expand its area by as much as 1–3 % per year. This ability to expand rapidly is at the expense of other plants and wildlife, and can cause major problems for land managers that can result in high economic loss. Bracken colonises ground with an open vegetation structure but is slow to colonise healthy, well managed heather stands. Bracken can become a problem on almost any land, except high mountains, and land that is periodically waterlogged or cultivated. The main reasons for the recent spread of bracken are overstocking, and increased nutrification.

Benefits for wildlife

Management to maintain scattered stands of bracken on appropriate sites can provide good habitat for a variety of wildlife

Bracken dominated areas may be less important for wildlife than the communities displaced by it. In many areas it is of major conservation benefit to re-establish the previous semi-natural habitat eg upland heath. Bracken also limits the forage area available to livestock.

Identify and target specific areas for control, tackle advancing areas first. A large scale approach is more cost-effective than a piecemeal approach.

However, locally bracken can be of value where it occurs mixed with other vegetation types, and smallareas should be retained in appropriate locations. In some areas, bracken can support a woodland ground flora, for example violets and bluebells, by acting as a substitute woodland canopy. Violets are the larval food plant of the high brown fritillary a rare and declining species of butterfly.

Small stands of bracken provide nesting, feeding and roosting habitat for a variety of birds, for example ring ouzels, twites, whinchats, and stonechats.