Opportunities for sustainable land management through productive use of weeds: insights from the past, present and future of gorse

Gorse is a shrubby plant native to Europe and introduced widely around the globe. Previous work has examined the historic uses of gorse, and the management problems gorse presents.

This thesis addresses a gap in knowledge as to how historic uses of weeds could be revived to support future sustainable land management, presenting the research in the style of three academic papers.

Paper 1 employs archival research to assess artefacts (n=70) across nine UK archives. Through thematic analysis in NVivo 20, it applies the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Values Framework to historical data. The most common historical uses of gorse were as animal fodder and fuelwood, with values of ‘maintenance of options’, ‘habitat creation and maintenance’ and ‘practices of care’.

Paper 2 combines interviews (n=22) and questionnaires (n=30) across gorse’s native (UK) and non-native (Australia) range to understand differing stakeholder perceptions of gorse, and links these to differing management approaches. Thematic analysis reveals that the lack of perceived heritage value in gorse’s non-native range can be linked to a focus on total eradication, absent in its native range.

Paper 3 asks novel questions of the interview data to understand what knowledge land stakeholders require to implement productive weed use. A decision support framework is created and validated using test data from the interviews. Findings show productive use depends on scale, cost and a suitable enabling environment.

By assessing weeds through the lens of the IPBES Values Framework, the thesis gives greater agency and modern relevance to historical data. The thesis argues more broadly that weeds should be viewed as useful plants that provide for society, rather than as pests to be wasted and destroyed. Ensuring productive uses are considered and evaluated as a sustainable option in decision making is necessary for improved people-nature interactions.