Fury after rare roadside orchids 'cut down for health of safety'

[Rosemary]

The wild orchids growing along a stretch of the A35 at Charmouth, Dorset were cut last month by Highways Agency contractors because they were obstructing motorists’ views.

The verge was populated with long grass and wild flowers, including the range of orchids, but locals say the area now resembles a bowling green.

Despite the verge being about 25ft wide, agency officials feared the flowers would encroach into the road and impair the vision of motorists.

But the contractor’s actions have left locals outraged while experts voiced fears the 30 or so purple orchids have now been completely eradicated.
They say it can take decades for the delicate flowers to grow back in the same spot once they have been destroyed.

Fury after rare roadside orchids 'cut down for health of safety' - Telegraph

 

[Pyan]

Seems to be a blind spot in council thinking, so to speak...

To mow a grass verge containing one of Britain's rarest orchids once may be regarded as misfortune.

To repeat the blunder the following year starts to look like carelessness.

But to chop down the same patch of endangered wild flowers three years in a row takesa particular type of bureaucratic clod-headedness.

Council destroys extremely rare orchids THREE years in a row | Mail Online

 

[Rosemary]

I think they must be COMPLETELY blind, Pyan!

And to think that happened in the county I grew up in

Three years in a row to cut down such rare orchids could see the complete loss of them.

'Clod-headedness' is putting it mildly

 

[Anne Lyle]

I complained to my local council last year about the timing of their verge-mowing, which lopped the flowers off all the (admittedly not that rare) bee orchids - and got zero response...

 

[Vertigo]

Mindless beurocracy! It's a sin but you'll never change it so long as they have the excuse of it being for safety (seems to me the grass and flowers would have to get seriously tall to obscure motorists vision).

I remember reading about a similar thing a while back to do with safety (though not to do with rare wild flowers). It seems there was a road in a forest in a remote part of Canada (isn't that almost all forest) and this road crossed a railway track with no gates or anything. Trains were pretty rare so it seems drivers tended to approach too fast to really stop when they reached a point where they could actually see if a train was coming. So they chopped down a load of trees around the crossing so the motorists could see down the track a bit earlier and the only result was that drivers approached and crossed the track even faster than before!

 

[Starbeast]

I surprised, with such a rare plant, that they didn't relocate them.

 

[dustinzgirl]

I'm confused, if it takes decades for them to grow back how can they be cut three years in a row?

Also, bureaucracy or no, its just human nature to destroy any threat we can not contain and control.

Sad, tho, that they weren't transplanted or preserved by trimming them back.

We used to have wandering mountain goats here, we saw them by the freeway off the mountains esp in spring, all the way up to when my babies were babies fifteen years ago. But then the Wildlife people captured and moved them, mainly because they could have caused a wreck. And of course the way people drive today they would, but fifteen years ago and throughout my own childhood there wasn't the traffic for it to matter.