New conservation policies are turning the UK’s moorlands into tinderboxes? Fire crews and local communities say traditional land management is being dangerously ignored.
To set the scene let me start with what the chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA) Alistair Carmichael said to the NE Chief Scientist, Professor Sallie Bailey at the conclusion of the committees recent evidence session on wildfire.
“Sallie, it is as clear as day that Natural England has set its face against burning and will hear no arguments to the contrary. We got that from your chair and your chief executive a few weeks ago. However, when you read the evidence that we have had, it is equally clear that you have not taken people in the upland communities with you. They are simply not persuaded, and that is relevant to this inquiry because we are talking about wildfires.
I take you right back to the evidence I read at the beginning. It is about the people in these communities who are living with this and who are the first responders. It is the gamekeepers, the shepherds and the upland farmers who are the people who will go out and tackle this. If Government—whatever arm of Government it is going to be—does not engage with sufficient respect to take communities with them, the day is going to come when they look out the window, they see the smoke and they just draw their curtains, and that is to nobody’s benefit.”
It is unlikely that anyone remains unaware that 2026 is a repeat of the wildfire horror show that was 2025. As I write this, the RSPB managed moors at Arnfield, Crowden, and Dove Stones are burning, as is Ryovan, another RSPB site in the Cairngorms. People are being evacuated from their homes. Roads are closed. Multiple fire crews and masses of equipment are being deployed. Helicopters are ferrying water. Farmers and gamekeepers are working through the night. The peat is burning. The water supply is being polluted. Wildlife is being destroyed. Toxic smoke is drifting into populated areas. These fires are the definition of an environmental disaster. Yet, they leave the people responsible for the management of these places in no doubt that it is nothing to do with them.
This is the new pattern. It follows the mayhem of last year, and big spring wildfires like the one below Snake Pass. Other fires are available, a lot of them, but these will do. I dealt with some of the issues thrown up by the new Heather and Grass Burning Regulations in my Scribehound article ‘Will Banning Burning Ignite Bigger Wildfires’ in October last year, and I will do my best not to repeat myself, but even I did not think, that after a wet winter, we would see proof of the pudding as quickly as we have.
Why is this happening?
What do the people who live in these places think is the cause this dreadful and apparently worsening ecological, economic, cultural and climate catastrophe? They say that a toxic combination of circumstances exists that make these tragedies inevitable. It isn’t complicated.
The old management systems have now been stopped on conservation industry land for long enough for the vegetation to build up in tonnage and continuity. This has created a landscape filled with fuel. After that all you need is the right weather, and an ignition source, and you have a wildfire.
It is really hard to not notice when Manchester has disappeared under smoke
They cite Professor Claire Belcher, who researches wildfire from Exeter University and who says, on the basis of available science that the perfect weather conditions for wildfire are the three 30s. They are: a temperature above 30C; a humidity below 30%; and a wind over 30 km/hour. The practitioners say that if you have those conditions, and we have them far more often than we are used to, all you need is fuel, and ignition and the landscape catches fire.
They are very clear that banning of burning on conservation industry land has already made things far, far worse. They don’t claim that rotational cool burning is a silver bullet, but they are clear that without it’s wise use the odds swing in the favour of wildfire, Their evidence is that RSPB, the National Trust, and others who stopped rotational burning several years ago are now demonstrating their point in the most tragic fashion.
This is where the argument starts
The RSPB, the National Trust, NE , Defra, and much of the conservation industry, including the powerful and burgeoning peatland restoration industry, believe that this is nonsense, and that the landowners, farmers, shepherds, gamekeepers and the Fire and Rescue Service are either too dim to understand or are making it up to further their selfish interests in sheep and grouse. They are very clear that the way to stop wildfire is to rewet the moors, when they will naturally reach a state where they will not burn. They believe that they are only subject to wildfire because historic rotational burning has favoured heather which prefers drier conditions and is the cause of wildfire vulnerability. If you stop burning and rewet, what is called ‘Wet and Walk Away’, wildfire problems disappear.
To make things far worse, or far better, depending on what you believe, the government has now accepted the RSPB/NE position, and effectively banned rotational cool burning on roughly an additional million acres of moorland. This was justified in a 322 page NE document NEER 155, reviewing the science around rotational burning. In the worst wildfire year in our history they dedicated a few paragraphs to the subject, and dismissed the idea that rotational burning had any relevance worth talking about.
The practitioners, the people who live there, and work on these moors, and who have the knowledge and skills acquired over generations, think that this is bull-feathers and the whole thing is a stitch up. They were, of course, ignored. Usually, that would be the end of it. Usually the conservation elites of the NGOs and the regulator get away with fixing things amongst themselves. This time it seems a bit different. It is really hard to not notice when Manchester has disappeared under smoke, roads are closed, helicopters are ferrying water, and there is only a man with a bucket left for cover because most of the FRS is on an RSPB nature reserve putting out a fire that was supposed to be impossible.
The rapidly worsening wildfire situation, that the authors of the NE burning review NEER 155 somehow failed to mention in their 322 pages, or perhaps did even notice, has attracted some serious attention. The Parliamentary Audit Committee and EFRA have taken an interest in the subject to the general discomfort of the people responsible. So they should. What is at stake is far too important to be ignored, and left in the hands of people rendered incompetent by prejudice and self interest.
What about the people who really do have skin in the game – the Fire & Rescue Service
When asked, the FRS professionals are commendably clear. They are in no doubt what needs to be done. The Chairman of the Scottish Wildfire Forum said,
“Seasonal burning following the guidance in the Muir burn Code is one of the key means of significantly reducing the risk of damage from wildfires in the rural environment.”
In 2018 after a huge wildfire swept across the unmanaged moorland at Winterhill in Lancashire the FRS reported their views to the Upland Partnership, whose members included the conservation NGO’s who own and manage much of the moorland.
The FRS report stated that,
“The fire, supported by an easterly wind, spread rapidly through a continuous arrangement of surface fuels..its rate of spread at the head part of the fire reaching approximately 1000 metres an hour.”
Three key challenges identified were; Unbroken and continuous arrangement of vegetation across the landscape; Combustible fuel loads; and High surface and ground fuels.
The report concluded that,
“The combination of very supportive weather and the presence of high fuel loads on the landscape presented the FRS with the most difficult wildland fire-fighting operation ever encountered in NW England.”
Obviously, as far as the conservation industry and NE are concerned, they might as well not have bothered.
However there was a final twist to Winterhill. In 2020 the RSPB were running yet another campaign attacking cool, rotational burning. As is usual they collected endorsements from VIPs, who, whilst they knew little about the subject, trusted the RSPB. One of these was from the Mayor of Manchester, and now Prime Minister, Andy Burnham.
The example of the iniquity of cool rotational burning he cited was, bizarrely, the Winterhill wildfire. The very wildfire that the FRS said was made infinitely worse by the absence of the cool rotational burning, was used by him as an example of the harm done by cool rotational burning. This was not in the confusion of the moment. It was 2 years after the fire, and more importantly well after the FRS report had been received by, amongst others, the RSPB.
We may never know if the RSPB drafted his words or whether they simply bit their lips when the future Prime Minister made a statement so contradictory that even President Trump would have blushed, but either way it happened, and that speaks volumes for the honesty of some of the people involved in the campaign to ban burning. Anything goes. If it is OK to make a fool of a future Prime Minister are their any limits?
Apparently not. The RSPB, the National Trust and NE will have their way whatever. They will ignore the farmers, the shepherds, and the gamekeepers. They will ignore the FRS, and the local communities. They will ignore their own front line staff and the evidence of their own eyes. They will have their way, and we, the landscape, its wildlife, and the peat will bear the consequences.
It is mad, but they have got their way. The record wildfire year of 2025 was just the start. The wildfires are raging now and more will come. The same poor devils will fight them. The same people will sit and watch. Is there any hope? Who knows a new Prime Minister, who was casually set up by the RSPB, might decide that having the landscape on fire every time the sun shines is too big a price to pay to save the faces of NE and the RSPB.
The National Fire Chiefs Council has a view
Thanks to the EFRA enquiry, we can read what the NFCC, the professional body for the UK’s fire and rescue services, thinks. This some of what they told the committee.
“FRS experience has shown that efforts to improve biodiversity and environmental resilience, such as through rewilding and rewetting peat bogs, can actually have a detrimental impact on wildfire risk due to the associated increase in the amount of vegetation and the resultant fuel loads”.
“Nature-based solutions have also resulted in vegetation being allowed to grow across natural fire breaks which had previously helped prevent the spread of wildfires, producing larger wildfires that are more difficult to contain.”
“Proper land management is key to ensuring that the wildfires that do occur are more easily contained and do not spread as easily.”
The Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Service (GMFRS) who are fighting current RSPB wildfires wrote from direct operational experience.
Its recommendations included:
“maintained fuel breaks and anchor points (tracks, paths, moorland edges), vegetation management around the urban–moorland fringe, and maintaining/marking emergency access and water points”.
On burning itself, GMFRS said that on land where, ” managed burning, grazing, and mechanical cutting are used,” the aim should be to “reduce continuous fine fuels in the highest-risk areas while protecting peat, biodiversity, and water quality,” with proper assurance, monitoring and landowner accountability.
In a nutshell what they want is an evidence-led, “right place, right method” position. Keep all systems available, and don’t make things worse by messing about with what works. They used diplomatic language, but the frustration can be read between the lines. The position is essentially in line with the farmers, shepherds and gamekeepers.
They won’t listen and they can’t see because they won’t look
Nothing matters beyond the desperate desire to ban rotational burning at whatever cost. There are people in Defra and NE that think that what is going on is wrong and dangerous, but they dare not speak out. Even in the RSPB you can find front line staff who know that what is going on is wrong, but they also know that saying anything would be career limiting.
It is simple. The RSPB, who have been the main driver of the campaign to ban rotational cool burning, have stated repeatedly that cool burning is practically indistinguishable from wildfire, burns the underlying peat and is the main cause of wildfire. They are also clear that if you stop rotational burning and rewet the risk of wildfire will disappear. The people who speak on behalf of NE have clearly bought into this fake narrative and happily repeat it.
Readers may recall this quote from NE’s chief scientist, Professor Sallie Bailey.
‘A few miles away in Dove Stone Nature Reserve outside Oldham, a wildfire started in 2018 on neighbouring dry, heather-dominated land before spreading onto the reserve. The more diverse, damp vegetation slowed the fire down enough for it to be stopped by a moss-filled gully located on United Utilities/RSPB land. Although the fire wouldn’t have died out completely by itself, the change from dry peat to the wetter Sphagnum-dominated gullies of Dove Stone meant that the height and heat of the flames reduced sufficiently for human action to bring it under control’.
On that occasion I was pointing out that she was wrong, the famous gully had not had the impact she was claiming, the rewetting had not had the effect she had been told it had. In fact the wind had changed, but there has been no change in the Professors opinion that the wetter Sphagnum-dominated peat on the RSPB rewetted moor ‘meant that the height and heat of the flames reduced sufficiently for human action to bring it (the fire) under control’.
I said then that the statement did not reflect reality. Now there can be no doubt whatsoever. This spring the Snake burnt to black ash and melted plastic dams, despite vast sums spent on restoration and rewetting. Now Crowden, Arnfield, Tintwhistle and Dove Stones, the very places that the NE Chief Scientist said was protected by RSPB rewetting, are burning. Not just the vegetation, the peat. Not just for a day or two, but for weeks. The whole bloody landscape is on fire, and God only knows how much wildlife has been killed, and how much peat has been burnt and how many centuries it will take to replace it.
It is utterly shocking that, in the face of this utter mayhem, the people who are responsible for the management that made it inevitable, and who are forcing the same madness onto another a million acres of moorland have nothing meaningful to say. Obviously, they will later, when they appeal for funds to ‘Restore’ it again, but for now nothing resembling taking responsibility. Not a moments self awareness or a hint of contrition. It will all be because insufficient time has not elapsed since rotational cool burning ended for the miracle of incombustibility to work. Well good luck with that, the no-burn plots in the Ember study that were supposed to have not been burnt since time out of mind burnt as well as the rest.
Who is out there fighting the fire? Obviously not the people responsible, that would be unthinkable. It is the FRS who predicted what would happen and who were ignored. It is the farmers and gamekeepers who said what would happen, and were ignored and, for good measure, demonised. You literally could not make this up.
What is the answer?
In a rational world it would be obvious. The people who have managed these wonderful places for generations would continue to do so, using systems that have stood the test of time, informed and augmented developing best practice. In a rational world rewetting, cutting, cool burning, grazing, and induced vegetation changes would all contribute, as circumstances dictated and as opportunities arose. The practitioners would behave responsibly, there would be trust between them and the regulator, the conservation industry would be discussing with both how to perfect the various systems to generate value for money outcomes for rare species and climate mitigation.
All government needed to do was sit down with the people who own and manage the land, explain what they want, and agree, dale by dale, the best strategy for cost effective delivery.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where protecting and enhancing income streams, accumulating power, and not losing face, are more important than positive outcomes for nature and the climate. A binary world, where there are only good and bad or winners and losers, where nothing is nuanced. A world where banning things is preferred to perfecting them, and where science is more likely to be a weapon to get your own way rather than a torch to illuminate the best way.
But none of this has any effect. No impact at all on the closed minds of the RSPB, the National Trust, the conservation industry or the minister. The locals are wrong. The practitioners are wrong. The FRS are wrong. The scientists who wrote the Royal Society paper saying that it would be a mistake to ban burning are wrong. The increasing number of other sceptical scientists are wrong. Everybody with any practical knowledge is wrong. Only they are right. Re-wet and rewild, Wet and Walk Away, and there will be no problem. Yet they have fire, after fire, after fire.
As I write this the two largest wildfires currently burning in the UK are on land managed by RSPB. Is there never a moments doubt? I will admit that I know enough to be certain that I don’t know enough to be certain. Why can’t they, just for once, indulge in a moments self-awareness?
It could be so much better. It could be perfect. All government needed to do was sit down with the people who own and manage the land, explain what they want, and agree, dale by dale, the best strategy for cost effective delivery. They can maximise biodiversity, blanket bog and carbon capture whilst still allowing effective moorland management. Because that is what moorland management delivers. The only thing that stands in the way is the dead hand of misplaced certainty, reinforced by prejudice and arrogance of the coloniser.
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