When significant areas of our National Parks go up in smoke, we look at causes of wildfires as well as action needed to prevent and control them in the future.
Wildfires have become an increasingly destructive force in England and Wales as summer temperatures increase. Wildfires can be devastating and when treasured landscapes like National Parks go quickly up in smoke we lose habitats and species that could take decades to return.
National Parks shouldn’t be the victims of the climate crisis but the heroes. National Parks in England and Wales contain massive areas of habitats like peatlands which are capable of storing 80 million tonnes of carbon.
Peatlands support important wildlife habitats and species and play a vital role in carbon storage as undamaged bogs remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis in mosses and other plants. Healthy peatlands also alleviate flood risk and reduce the amount of treatment needed to provide high-quality drinking water. However, many of these benefits are lost when peatlands are damaged or degraded.
Various studies in recent years have indicated that between 70% and 80% of peatlands in the UK are damaged with human-induced fires as a significant cause.
Rewetting and restoring all peatlands in National Parks to good health would significantly reduce the risk of wildfires in these areas and would make those fires that do start easier to control as fires would spread far less quickly on healthy wet peatland.
Across all the National Parks around a third of the land area is made up of peatlands of one type or another.
There is no evidence that burning is needed for peatland restoration or the maintenance of healthy peatlands. In fact, the IUCN UK Peatland Programme has undertaken a detailed review and concludes that wet peatlands are less prone to wildfires and that healthy peatlands do not need burning for their maintenance. Peatland burning is a significant cause of wildfires, it is extremely harmful to the climate and biodiversity; has negative landscape impacts when it results in large areas of heather monoculture; reduces water quality; and increases flood risk. Alternate forms of moorland management are available and provide longer-term, more natural solutions than burning.
Burning is sometimes used on moorlands in the belief that it helps reduce the risk of wildfires on degraded peatlands with abundant heather. However, burning just maintains the degraded state and poorly managed burning damages peat-forming vegetation further.
Typically, wildfires take hold on drier peatland areas where non-typical peatland vegetation has grown, providing a greater fuel load for the fire. Wet bogs in good condition have less vegetation to fuel a fire and reduce the spread of fire as wet peat does not burn.
A review of the evidence on wildfires by Natural England in 2020 found “strong evidence that managed fires escaping control cause a proportion of wildfires, particularly in the uplands”. The review reports data from a study in the Peak District National Park which found that 24% of fires for which a cause could be identified from 1976 to 2004 were specifically attributed to escaped managed burns, but that because these fires tended to be larger, they accounted for over half of the area (51%) affected by wildfires during this period.
If burning has left a bare peat surface it can take up to 50 years for Sphagnum plants to return.
There are significant wildfire risks posed by litter and the inappropriate disposal of items such as disposable BBQs. Disposable BBQs have been found to be the cause in multiple fires and are particularly dangerous as there is no safe way to dispose of them (due to the carbon monoxide risks if people take them away by car). The Countryside Code advice is “do not light fires and only have BBQs where signs say you can”, however, it is clear from some of the wildfires that have caused considerable damage in National Parks and elsewhere in recent years that a total ban is required.
Heathersage Moor, Peak District © Peaklass
Help us take action to prevent wildfires in National Parks today.
