Re: The unspoken truth about wildfires

On 30/07/2026 19:04, Julian 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

The EU has failed to get a grip on Europe’s wildfires

Europe is burning. From France to Spain, from Portugal to Greece, and 
even in Britain, the continent has been engulfed by flames this summer. 
In France, more than 117,000 hectares have been lost to a succession of 
wildfires and nearly a quarter of a million people have been evacuated. 
It’s already been dubbed ‘the worst season of fire in history’.

In Madrid, Paris and in other European capitals, politicians argue about 
the fires – or rather the response to them. The lack of fire-fighting 
aircraft in France, for example, has been seized on by opponents of 
Emmanuel Macron’s government.

Some of the media have focused on the human aspect: the fact that the 
majority of the fires have been started by people, either inadvertently 
or deliberately. Hundreds of arrests (predominantly young males) have 
been made by European police forces and in France courts intend to take 
‘tougher criminal action’ to deal with fire-starters.

But all this misses the crucial point, as Matt Ridley wrote in this 
week’s magazine. Most of Europe has made a mess of its wildfire 
management strategy this century. Ridley quoted Andrew Gilruth, chief 
executive of the Moorland Association, who explained: ‘In England the 
authorities are obsessed with rewilding and restricting all commonsense 
measures for reducing fuel loads.’

A lack of common sense has characterised Europe’s response to wildfires 
in the 21st century. During the scorching summer of 2003, some 740,000 
hectares were burnt and in response, the EU ‘set up an expert group to 
advise on how to prevent and fight fires in Europe’.

They published a report in early 2005, Forest Fires in Europe, declaring 
that their ‘general principle is to restore nature and not to change the 
landscape’. The report contained a great many statistics about forest 
fires in EU member states and bemoaned ‘the lack of a common EU forestry 
policy framework’. The report recognised the increased risk because of 
‘climate change and desertification’ but it didn’t offer coherent solutions.

It took another 21 years before the EU finally unveiled its wildfire 
strategy in March this year. It contained the usual Brussels waffle 
about ‘holistic approaches’ and ‘stakeholders’. Roxana Mînzatu, the 
Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and 
Preparedness, declared:

Europe must be ready before the first fire starts. That means building a 
real culture of preparedness: equipping people with the right skills, 
supporting firefighters and first responders, and helping communities 
understand the risks they face.

Underneath the trite soundbites, there was a recognition in the report 
that Europe has allowed great areas of combustible vegetation to spread 
throughout EU member states in recent decades. Abandoned farmland and 
unmanaged forests, together with droughts and rising temperatures, have 
created the conditions for a perfect firestorm.

The report said that in order to prevent future wildfires, the EU must 
pay ‘farmers and foresters to thin forests, graze livestock and restore 
abandoned land’. It also recommended restoring peatlands, flood plains 
and wetlands to retain moisture.

This strategy will take years to implement effectively. And, crucially, 
has the EU really got the will? At a meeting of agriculture ministers in 
Brussels in May, Environment Conmissioner Jessika Roswall announced that 
the Commission does ‘not plan any new initiatives on forest management’.

The management of forests and land planning is also the preserve of 
individual governments and the EU has struggled for a unified approach. 
Brussels can recommend and encourage but it can’t force governments to 
act. Sweden and Finland are the most resistant to EU interference on 
forest management, while France also broadly believes the issue should 
be one of national competence.

Critics claim there is no competence. There was a huge wildfire in the 
south-west of France in 2022, an area famous for its intensive maritime 
pine monoculture. Many hectares of pine trees were lost. The response? 
To replant thousands of pine trees in exactly the same layout.

On Monday, Emmanuel Macron visited the Gironde department, in the 
south-west of France, where more than 40,000 hectares have been lost to 
flames this month. The president was confronted by the independent mayor 
of one town affected by the fire.

‘We need a better-maintained, larger firebreak, even if it means losing 
1,000 or 2,000 hectares,’ said Bruno Lafon, the independent mayor of 
Biganos and the head of the association for the protection of forests 
against fire in his region.

Lafon also took aim at politicians and environmentalists pontificating 
in Paris. ‘We need to stop talking,’ he said, adding that the Paris 
elite and the people whose homes are burning ‘no longer live in the same 
world’.

The same rings true of the Brussels elite. It’s time to stop talking and 
take commonsense action.


Gavin Mortimer