Chinese lanterns can kill

They look charming, even a bit ethereal, as they float away with their glowing flames. Chinese lanterns are often a popular feature at a summer party – but they can kill livestock and horses and they can start fires.

Made of treated paper with a wire or bamboo frame, Chinese lanterns float off and land anywhere the wind takes them – often with their candles or solid fuel burners still alight.  That is a very bad idea in an area of arable farms and thatched cottages.

James Sheppard, who farms just outside Marlborough, has very definite views on them: “They’re a little bonfire floating out into the countryside. What sensible person is going to do that?”

This week six fell on one of his fields of oilseed rape stubble that was due for ploughing. A couple of fields away there were sheep grazing. A seventh lantern fell into a field of recently cut straw.  It was the only time this summer that James was relieved the straw had been soaked by rain.

Chinese lanterns with rigid wire frames can still be bought.  The wire in these frames is especially lethal for animals – in the wild or on farms.  Biodegradable lanterns are now widely sold.  Their bamboo rings are said to burn up before they land.  
However the ones that landed on James Sheppard’s fields had their bamboo rings intact.  When these are taken by machines into bales of straw or hay, they break leaving terribly sharp splintered ends. These can end up lacerating the mouths or piercing the stomachs of cattle and sheep.

James Sheppard knows what damage these lanterns can do.  He watched a cow dying in pain having swallowed parts of a lantern.  She had to be put out of her misery.

Two years ago, the dangers Chinese lanterns pose in the countryside were raised at prime minister’s questions by a Conservative MP.  But it seems to be one of those issues which would get the newspapers shouting ‘killjoys’ at politicians – so nothing has been done to control them.

James Sheppard would like Wiltshire to become a Chinese lantern free county: “Would you want to be responsible for the death of an animal?”  And even if they are not seen to kill, they provide a litter nuisance that has to be cleared up: “It’s like throwing litter – long range litter. It’s such a pointless thing to do.”

If no politician – national or local – is going to be sensible enough to ban these lanterns or at least to control what they are made of, James has another idea.  Each lantern should have to carry a small flame resistant tag with the sender’s phone number on it.  Then farmers could at least contact the people who set them on their way and shame them into coming to their farms to pick up the litter.