Re: The unspoken truth about wildfires

On 8/1/2026 10:23 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
> On Sat, 1 Aug 2026 18:04:46 +0100, Julian <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> 
>> 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
> 
> As if any old carpenter would know how to do that.  Stupid eu anyway.
> 
Any old carpenter would know common sense.

Human activity causes roughly 85% to 90% of all wildfires, with nature 
accounting for the remaining small fraction.
 >


>> 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