The heavy duty MJ2000 is the strongest of the cut and collect machinery forest rangers investigated for grass maintenance at Ashdown Forest in Sussex.
Dating back to the Norman Conquest, Ashdown Forest in the South East of England is one of the UK’s largest free public access spaces.
It is also known as the home of Winnie-the-Pooh - 1,600 hectares of the forest is heathland which represents 3 percent of all lowland heathland in the UK. This makes it an important national conservation area which is managed by the Ashdown Forest rangers.
The rangers’ role is to restore and maintain the area as heathland using a variety of methods including bracken cutting, heather mowing and scrub clearance. To assist the rangers with these conservation activities, a Major 2m Flail Collector is used to cut and collect bracken and grasses in the forest.
The rangers at Ashdown Forest mow between 200 and 300 hectares of bracken each year with this machine. The Major MJ2000 enables effective management of the heathland by allowing cutting in difficult terrain and collection of the cut material at the same time. A 4.5m topper was previously used, but this left the cut material behind and still had to be removed from the site.
The adjustable cutting height allows the machine to work a variety of vegetation types, making it possible to take bracken out of heather areas without having to mow too much of the heather. When the Ashdown Forest rangers were researching a suitable mowing solution for the heathlands, they were immediately impressed with the overall build of the Major Flail Collector. It was the strongest of the cut-and-collect machines investigated and competitively priced.
