Something has shifted this summer, and it should not be allowed to pass quietly. For the best part of a decade, the organisations holding the largest share of Britain's upland conservation estate told the country that wildfire was a problem of weather, arsonists and disposable barbecues. Land management, they said, had nothing to do with it. Those who argued otherwise were dismissed as…
On 14 August the Government sent an emergency alert to every phone in the country warning of extreme wildfire risk. Four days later, the Peak District National Park Authority's website carries a notice that access land in the White Peak is closed because the fire severity level is exceptional. The Dark Peak, where every major fire of this summer has burned, remains open. Anyone who has walked the…
For years, activist groups have lectured the moorland communities about fire. Controlled burning, they claim, is vandalism. The uplands, they tell anyone who will listen, must be protected from those who actually live and work on them. This week, many of those same activists pitched tents on a moor in the Peak District, in August, during one of the driest summers on record, with wildfires already…
The RSPB's explainer of 5 August names one cause, climate change, and finds no fault in the policies it has spent a decade forcing on everybody else. Its own reserves burned this summer. The men who turned out to help are not mentioned once. Everything in the article rests on a single sentence: that the rise in wildfire is driven by climate change "rather than the presence or absence of specific…
United Utilities marked International Bog Day with a post about peatland: a serious statistic, a long list of thanks, and an appeal to the public to behave themselves on the moor. The statistic is the problem. Around 924 hectares across Tintwistle Moor, Dovestone and Macclesfield Forest have been affected by this summer's wildfires — more than 1,300 football pitches, as the company puts it. Set…
On Tuesday, a farmer in Rutland stopped his tractor in the middle of harvest to take a call from BBC Radio 4. In under four minutes, speaking to Winifred Robinson on You and Yours, he set out a clearer account of wildfire prevention than anything government has managed to publish this summer. Monty Andrews has been farming for more than sixty years. He was not representing a campaign group. He had…
New guidance to moorland managers on requesting temporary access restrictions during exceptional wildfire conditions contains an uncomfortable revelation. Ask four National Park Authorities the same question about fire prevention and you get four different answers, ranging from a direction ready to activate to a general enquiries inbox. In the middle of the hottest summer on record, that is not…
Over the past fortnight, Britain has watched its uplands burn. A wildfire that began near Manchester spread across the Peak District, sending thick smoke over Glossop, Snake Pass, Woodhead and Dove Stone, while a major blaze tore through the Cairngorms, forcing the evacuation of homes, businesses, campsites and the Cairngorm Mountain Resort. At one point around 19 wildfires were burning across…
As firefighters spend another night on the hill at Ryvoan Bothy, as families are turned out of their homes in Glenmore with minutes to grab their belongings, as three and a half kilometres of the Cairngorms goes up in smoke, the two largest wildfires burning in Britain right now are on RSPB ground. Not grouse moors. Not the land that the RSPB has spent a decade telling the public is badly managed.…
Nearly three weeks. That is how long firefighters have now been fighting the wildfire on Tintwistle Moor above Glossop, and on Sunday Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service declared it a major incident. The blaze, which began on 24 June, has torn through around 260 hectares of moorland and woodland, and crews were called back to the scene in the early hours of Monday morning as high winds drove the…
