Available: A Toolkit for Local Authorities
.
The Devon Wildlife Trust is concerned about the use of pesticides:
Pesticides: respond to the UK’s action plan consultation | The Wildlife Trusts
They will be hosting an event next week, with speaker Nick Mole, of Pesticide Action Network UK:
They are meanwhile running a campaign:
Pesticide Free Towns – A Toolkit for Local Authorities by PAN UK – issuu
The question being, to what extent councils and towns in Devon are ‘pesticide-free’.
The County Council was urged to commit to a policy of not using glyphosates:
Futures Forum: A Green Action Plan for Devon
Instead, it preferred a rather watered-down version:
Agenda item – 10 Point Green Action Plan (Minute 208 – 23 May 2019) – Democracy in Devon
Although it intends to:
Take action to phase out all glyphosate pesticides used in council weed spraying or any other council related activity, by December 2019 (there may be exceptional circumstances such as dealing with specific non native species, such as Japanese knotweed)
Devon Green Action Plan agreed to – Vision Group for Sidmouth
Indeed, these policies have their limits:
Glyphosate-based weed killers – Freedom of information
Meanwhile, Exeter City is trialling alternatives:
Alternative methods of controlling weeds in the city to be trialled
And Exeter is on the Pesticide-Free Towns list:
Pesticide-Free Towns – success stories – Pesticide Action Network UK
And other Devon councils are acting:
Devon councils could ban Roundup weedkiller amid cancer concerns – Devon Live
East Devon and the Sid Valley have got projects going to keep glyphosates off road-side verges:
Life on the Verge: wildflowers at the Bowd – Vision Group for Sidmouth
Urban rewilding in Devon – Vision Group for Sidmouth
Letting grass verges grow – Vision Group for Sidmouth
Biodiversity on the roadside – Vision Group for Sidmouth
photo: Ed Dolphin, Sid Valley Biodiversity Group