Dangerous Complacency: Natural England Report Author Alistair Crowle Dismisses Wildfire Reality with Mediterranean Quip

When policymakers prioritise clever rhetoric over fire science, landscapes and communities pay the price

"Only this morning, I was asking myself, is there anywhere more eastern Mediterranean than the UK?"

With this flippant remark, Alistair Crowle—co-author of Natural England's controversial heather burning review—sought to dismiss legitimate comparisons between UK wildfire management and the catastrophic fires faced last summer in Southern Europe.

It's the kind of glib, self-satisfied statement that plays well in Whitehall meeting rooms. It's also breathtakingly complacent.

Physics Doesn't Respect Borders

Crowle's sardonic dismissal reveals a fundamental misunderstanding—or wilful ignorance—of fire science. Wildfire behaviour is governed by the "fire triangle": fuel, weather, and topography. This isn't opinion. It's physics.

Whether you're standing on a Greek hillside or a Yorkshire moor, the principle remains identical: accumulate massive quantities of dry vegetation, add a spark, and you get an inferno. The Mediterranean climate may intensify the problem, but it doesn't own the problem.

Yet Crowle apparently believes UK moorlands exist in some meteorological exception zone where continental fire science simply doesn't apply. This isn't careful policymaking—it's insularity dressed up as expertise.

Greece Learns. Natural England Sneers.

While Crowle makes quips about geography, Greece is legislating reality. Their draft "Active Fight" policy reintroduces prescribed burning specifically to reduce fuel loads—a recognition that decades of fire suppression alone has failed catastrophically.

The Greek government has learned, through bitter experience and blackened landscapes, that you cannot simply ban fuel management and hope weather patterns favour you indefinitely.

Meanwhile, Natural England's position—championed by authors like Crowle—essentially amounts to: "Don't worry, we're British. Different rules apply here."

The Evidence Crowle Ignores

This isn't theoretical concern-mongering. UK Fire and Rescue Services are sounding increasingly urgent alarms about fuel accumulation on our moorlands.

We are already seeing:

• Fires burning earlier and later in the season

• "Tinderbox" conditions created by continuous, unmanaged old vegetation

• Smoke impacts affecting public health, with hospital admissions linked to moorland fires

• The UK Climate Change Risk Assessment explicitly identifying wildfire as a major threat

Our own firefighters—the professionals who actually battle these blazes rather than theorise about them from government offices—are telling us fuel load is a critical safety issue.

But apparently Alistair Crowle knows better. After all, we're not in the Mediterranean.

Complacency Has Consequences

Crowle's dismissive attitude represents everything wrong with Natural England's approach to moorland management: metropolitan assumptions trumping rural reality, ideological preference disguised as science, and a dangerous insularity that rejects international evidence because it's politically inconvenient.

When Greece, California, Australia, and numerous other regions are recognising that suppression alone fails and that proactive fuel management is essential for landscape safety, the appropriate response is not a smug one-liner about geography.

The appropriate response is humility and urgent action. Instead, Natural England continues pushing policies that allow fuel to accumulate unchecked while patting themselves on the back for being so environmentally enlightened. Crowle's comment perfectly encapsulates this arrogance.

We Are Not Immune

Climate change is not making Britain more temperate—it's making our weather more volatile and extreme. Longer dry periods. Higher temperatures. Stronger winds. All the conditions that turn accumulated vegetation into fuel.

The question isn't whether UK moorlands will experience more severe wildfires. The question is when—and how catastrophic the consequences will be when policymakers have spent years ignoring the physics of fire because it didn't fit their preferred narrative.

Alistair Crowle's Mediterranean quip will look considerably less clever when UK communities are evacuated, when firefighters are overwhelmed, when carbon stored in peatlands goes up in uncontrolled smoke.

Fire doesn't care about Crowle's geographical snobbery. It cares about fuel.

And right now, thanks to policies he's helped author, we're providing plenty of it.