In article ,
Malcolm wrote:

I haven't noticed any ecologist (with or without capital letters) saying
anything here about the removal of primroses by the public for private
use. My phrase "scale of physical removal" refers to the digging up of
every plant in a wood, or along a roadside bank, for commercial
purposes. Such activities are more than sufficient to make the plant
rare where once it was plentiful.

Is this your only source of information? It isn't mine.

You are perfectly correct that such activities are a secondary (and,
yes, it is VERY secondary) cause of making plants such as primroses
rare. But that infamous Act goes to great trouble not to stop that
practice, as you know perfectly well. The vast majority of such
activities are done by or with the permission of the landowner.

If there was any serious intent to stop despoilation, then such
commercial cropping would have been brought under the planning laws.
But that was blocked for years on the grounds that it would interfere
with landowners rights. I can't remember whether the last half-hearted
proposal to put it in went through or not, but it was phrased so as
to have minimal effect.

That ghastly Act was not designed to provide ecological protection, so
much as to introduce extra property rights by the back door, in the
same way as the Enclosure Acts and so on. There was and is NO other
reason for banning the collection of ALL plants, however common and
resistant to harm from collection, and whether for private use or not.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.