What methods are used to prevent bush encroachment?

Answer 1

For small scale bush encroachment: buy a lot of chili powder or chipolte powder. Spread in a large, deep circle around the bush. All bugs and animals hate this. On the leaves, spay a solution of half water, half vinegar. These solutions are easy, cheap and organic.

Also : Try a product from your local feed store that kills all vegetation. Grazon ect.

For large scale encroachment, you might need to designate burn areas to burn the brush away depending on how large of an area you need to burn. Wind, weather play an important role in when and how to burn, as well as different strategies to maintain a control burn on the brush area. Having different people, lots of water and perhaps some firemen on hand may help you do a successful control burn of encroaching bush and trees. Fire is a more natural way of controlling bush even though it can have devastating consequences if it gets out of control. But in Mother Nature, forest fires is a natural balance of forests and bushland; it cleans up deadfall and dead bush and creates fertilizer and room for new life to take over.

Another method to use is bush hogging, where you bring in large equipment like bush-hoggers, catepillars or bulldozers to take down large areas of forested/bush land. This can be harmful to the land because these machinery often take some of the topsoil along with the trees and bush, as well it may be costly to truck in machinery to a remote area.

Yet another environmentally-friendly method is to subject the area to grazing or browsing animals such as goats, sheep or cattle. These animals love to nibble on tree leaves, bush buds, and rub on logs and such. The hoof action of these animals beat down the dead matter into the earth and also are able to clear brush simply by stepping on them and even the poop piles (especially from cows) weigh down the bushy plants, making room for the animals to move further into the bush, trample and eat vegetation until you decide enough's enough. Exposing trees to cattle and other browsers tends to kill the trees, which makes it easier to remove the dead trees from the others. Cattle are also great for killing saplings and suckers, which are great for inhibiting further brush and tree encroachment. You can have these animals in here in remote areas, as they do less damage to the environment than heavy machinery does. Control burns can be carried out as well after the animals have gone through the bush and tree areas, further clearing the area of debris and deadfall.

Chemical bush control can be done responsibly, safely and economically. It can be the most effective method with good long term results if applied in the correct way. See http://www.bushencroachment.com/ for more detail on chemical bush clearing.