Re: The unspoken truth about wildfires

Julian <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 30/07/2026 19:56, Tara wrote:
>> On Jul 30, 2026 at 2:53:09 PM EDT, "Julian" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 30/07/2026 19:29, Tara wrote:
>>>> On Jul 30, 2026 at 2:04:17 PM EDT, "Julian" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Bordeaux and Madrid are threatened by flames. In Sicily, arsonists tied
>>>>> burning rags to the tails of cats to spread fires. Here in Britain the
>>>>> Cairngorms and Peak District national parks are ablaze. It’s the climate
>>>>> Armageddon, say the greens. If only we had built more wind farms and
>>>>> eaten fewer cows this would not be happening.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hot, dry spells undoubtedly make fires more likely, but awkwardly for
>>>>> those blaming climate change, wildfires are getting less frequent
>>>>> worldwide, not more, as the globe warms. The acreage burned has
>>>>> decreased steadily since 2000, according to Nasa’s satellites, and is
>>>>> thought to have almost halved in a century. The great fires of 1871 in
>>>>> Wisconsin and Michigan burned more than a million hectares long before
>>>>> anybody drove a car, before even Joseph Swan’s first light bulb, when
>>>>> the world was cooler.
>>>>> 
>>>>> It is not just the trend that is surprising. Hard to believe, but this
>>>>> year is an unusually quiet year for wildfire: so quiet it is breaking
>>>>> records for lack of fires by this date, even in Europe. If you don’t
>>>>> believe me, check the figures produced by the Global Wildfire
>>>>> Information System: as of last week, the world had seen 106 million
>>>>> hectares burn this year, the lowest at this date since these records
>>>>> began in 2012. In Europe, just 3.6 million hectares have burned – less
>>>>> than half the average for this date. That’s cold comfort to people
>>>>> driven from their homes in France, but it is nonetheless a fact.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The real issue is that climate change is a handy excuse for politicians
>>>>> who have failed to take precautionary measures to prevent wildfires.
>>>>> They can just shrug: it’s global warming, innit? It has been known for
>>>>> many decades that in fire-prone habitats, the longer you go without a
>>>>> fire, the worse the fires will be. So preventing the build-up of tinder
>>>>> by controlled burns is the most important factor.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The California filmmaker Gabriel Mann’s hard-hitting 2023 documentary
>>>>> Hotshot showed in detail how fire suppression has made today’s fires
>>>>> harder to control. He has no patience with those who use climate change
>>>>> as an alibi. ‘They tell you the sky is falling and it’s all the fault of
>>>>> our modern, shitty climate,’ he says. ‘But when was the climate not shitty?’
>>>>> 
>>>>> Here in Britain the government has consistently and relentlessly
>>>>> demanded less ‘cool’ burning – low-intensity, controlled fires – in
>>>>> winter on heather moorland, Britain’s most fire-prone habitat. Such
>>>>> fires have been used by farmers and gamekeepers for generations to
>>>>> create a mosaic of short and long heather. This encourages fresh young
>>>>> heather shoots for sheep and grouse to feed on and makes open areas for
>>>>> rare birds such as golden plover and curlew to nest in. If done in
>>>>> winter it can burn off the rank heather plants while leaving the moss
>>>>> underneath barely touched, as demonstrated by a famous video in which a
>>>>> gamekeeper places a Mars bar in the moss, lights a fierce fire over it,
>>>>> then picks up the unscorched, unmelted chocolate bar, unwraps it and
>>>>> eats it.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Natural England argues that regular cool burning harms the habitat;
>>>>> researchers at York University and elsewhere argue the opposite: that it
>>>>> encourages the growth of sphagnum moss and other species by letting
>>>>> light in. But both sides agree that regular cool burns can dramatically
>>>>> reduce the risk of much more damaging wildfires, which burn down through
>>>>> the moss layer and into the peat. Cutting heather instead is less
>>>>> effective but better than nothing. Yet Natural England has banned
>>>>> heather burning on deep peat altogether and is pushing hard to limit it
>>>>> further everywhere – or at least tie it up in complicated licensing
>>>>> rules. As a result, the fuel load on heather moorland has been
>>>>> increasing; in places the heather is now waist-deep. The National Fire
>>>>> Chiefs Council warned last year that such restrictions on heather
>>>>> management would increase ‘the danger to firefighters and the public’.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Unlike private owners, bodies such as the Royal Society for the
>>>>> Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the National Trust are refusing to burn
>>>>> and reluctant to graze heather moorland, as they join the cult of
>>>>> ‘rewilding’. With the support of government, they plan to mitigate the
>>>>> fire risk by ‘rewetting’ moors with leaky dams to hold back rainwater.
>>>>> But this approach is useless in a drought.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Case in point: the Tintwistle fire in the Peak District spread from a
>>>>> wild camp in woodland on to a heather moor owned by United Utilities and
>>>>> managed by the RSPB. This moor had been extensively ‘rewetted’ yet it
>>>>> went up like a torch and the fire spread, drowned Manchester in smoke,
>>>>> burned deep into the peat and was only contained – for now – when local
>>>>> gamekeepers and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue used two diggers and
>>>>> a bulldozer to create a firebreak on its northwest flank on the
>>>>> neighbouring Stalybridge estate. But so quick is Natural England to
>>>>> prosecute landowners and gamekeepers for even inadvertently breaking
>>>>> rules about managing habitat that they were anxious they might be
>>>>> punished for doing this.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Richard Bailey, coordinator of the Peak District Moorland Group,
>>>>> estimates that the past month’s firefighting by gamekeepers would have
>>>>> cost the taxpayer millions of pounds if done by the fire service. Many
>>>>> long, hot, hard days and nights have left gamekeepers and their families
>>>>> under severe mental strain, alleviated a little by generous food drops
>>>>> from Micklehurst cricket club. You can imagine how much it sticks in the
>>>>> craw for these gamekeepers that they have been working to save land
>>>>> managed by an organisation that makes the risk worse.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The nearby Dovestone fire was also started on RSPB-managed land after a
>>>>> man drowned in the local reservoir and his friends commemorated him with
>>>>> fireworks. The Cairngorms fire too began on land owned by the RSPB at
>>>>> Abernethy. The irony is not lost on locals that the very same people who
>>>>> tell us that climate change is an existential crisis are also the ones
>>>>> urging us to stop using the one tool we know helps to mitigate the
>>>>> problem. If your view is that climate change is a massive threat, why
>>>>> are you pursuing policies that increase fuel load?
>>>>> 
>>>>> The North York Moors fire last year affected 2,500 hectares of moorland,
>>>>> smouldering for more than a month in the peat and releasing vast
>>>>> quantities of carbon dioxide. Yet no Defra minister bothered to visit.
>>>>> The cost of fighting these fires does not fall on their department, so
>>>>> why do they care, says Jamie Blackett, founder of Ground Cry, a new
>>>>> organisation campaigning on behalf of ground-nesting birds like curlews.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The authorities know their policies increase the fire risks. Here is
>>>>> what the Cairngorm National Park says in its Integrated Wildfire
>>>>> Management Plan about plans to increase shrubs and other vegetation by
>>>>> reducing deer and stopping burning: ‘These habitats will take many years
>>>>> to develop and during the intervening period fuel loads will increase,
>>>>> as will the corresponding need for fire risk mitigation.’ So they knew
>>>>> the risk was increasing. But little was done. John Kirk, a board member
>>>>> of the Cairngorms National Park Authority, told the Strathspey Herald:
>>>>> ‘Everyone is furious… the entire Abernethy forest has no firebreaks.’
>>>>> 
>>>>> Andrew Gilruth, chief executive of the Moorland Association, says:
>>>>> ‘While Scotland has a clear plan to manage the excess vegetation, in
>>>>> England the authorities are obsessed with rewilding and restricting all
>>>>> commonsense measures for reducing fuel loads.’
>>>>> 
>>>>> In May, before the drought, Gilruth wrote to MPs who represent moorland
>>>>> constituencies to point out that the number of firefighters is down by a
>>>>> quarter over the past seven years and that the fire service relies
>>>>> heavily on gamekeepers’ vehicles, water bowsers and other equipment.
>>>>> Banning the burning of heather means fewer keepers can justify having
>>>>> such equipment. He described Defra’s refusal to change policy on heather
>>>>> burning as reckless.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Sadly he was proved right. So was I. After I warned in these very pages
>>>>> last year that government policy was worsening the fire risk on
>>>>> moorland, it gives me no pleasure to say: ‘I told you so.’
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Matt Ridley
>>>> 
>>>> Indigenous peoples in North America have been conrolling the threat of wild
>>>> fires with prescribed/controlled burns for centuries. Canada is looking to do
>>>> the same in co-operation with our native people. We have a problem doing this
>>>> however because of the acessibility and vastness of our forests. But in a
>>>> country the size of Britain (and other European countries), it seems to me
>>>> that controlled fires are a no brainer.
>>> 
>>> Are inaccessible fires in vast forests really a problem?
>>> I think they're as likely good for the land's long term health.
>> 
>> There is that, but an uncontrolled fire can massively grow and send a lot of
>> smoke to people populated areas.
> 
> A bit like a volcano.
> 
> 

Yeah like that.