Downing Street Thanks Everyone for Fighting this Summer's Wildfires...Except the Gamekeepers.
This week, Number 10 Downing Street opened its doors to say thank you. A reception was held for those who stood on the front line of this summer's wildfires: fire and rescue services, mountain rescue, the RNLI, St John Ambulance, national park rangers and the Wildlife Trusts. Photographs of smiling attendees on the famous doorstep have been circulating on social media ever since.
The summer of 2026 was the worst wildfire season this country has seen in living memory. The major incident at Swineshaw and Dovestones alone ran for 34 days, the longest Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service has managed since 2018. Across the Peak District, the Pennines, the North York Moors and beyond, moorland burned for weeks on end. Those who fought those fires deserve every thank you they get. Which is why one omission from the guest list is so hard to stomach.
The people who did the most were not there
Anyone who was on the moors this summer knows who was there when the fires broke out. Alongside the firefighters, day after day, night after night, were the gamekeepers. They were there because they live there. They were there because they know the ground, the access tracks, the water sources and the wind. They were there with their own fogging units, their own quad bikes, their own bowsers and their own beaters, all bought and maintained at private expense, without a penny of public money.
They dug firebreaks by hand. They worked shifts of eighteen hours and more. They left their own families, their own livestock and their own livelihoods to stand on a fire line in temperatures that most people cannot imagine. When the fire service needed to get water onto an inaccessible flank, it was very often a gamekeeper who got it there. When the fire service stood down at night, it was very often a gamekeeper who stayed.
None of this is our opinion. It is the recorded view of the people who commanded the response. On 21 September, Dave Russel, Chief Fire Officer of Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, wrote to the Peak District Moorland Group to express his "sincere thanks" for their support during the July and August fires. His words are worth quoting in full: "Without such assistance there is no doubt in my mind that the impact on firefighters, communities and the environment would have been far greater." He described partners on the fire line as "100% committed" and said he intends to convene a meeting in Greater Manchester to thank them in person.
That is the Chief Fire Officer. That is the man who was there. He had no difficulty recognising who did the work.
So who decided to leave them out?
The guest list for the Downing Street reception did not write itself. Somebody drew it up, and somebody signed it off. The Wildlife Trusts were on it. National park staff were on it. The gamekeepers of the Peak District Moorland Group, and their counterparts in every other Regional Moorland Group who fought fires this summer, were not.
We would like to think this was an oversight. But it is very hard to believe that the people who organised a reception specifically to honour the wildfire response somehow forgot the one group that the fire service itself credits with keeping the damage from being far worse. It looks, to anyone who was on those moors, like a choice. And if it was a choice, it was a disgraceful one.
It is also a telling one. For years, some of the organisations who did receive an invitation have campaigned to remove gamekeepers from the uplands altogether, and to ban the very management practices, including controlled cool burning, that create the firebreaks and reduce the fuel load that made this summer's fires so ferocious. This summer showed, in the plainest possible terms, what happens when fuel loads are left to build. And yet the people who have spent decades warning about exactly this were left standing outside the door.
The public have noticed
Since the omission became public, the gamekeepers involved have been inundated with letters and messages of support from members of the public. The words used again and again are "disgrace" and "shameful". Ordinary people, many of whom watched the fires from their own windows, have no difficulty seeing what Downing Street apparently could not.
Gamekeepers do not fight wildfires for recognition. They fight them because the moors are their home and their responsibility, and because when the alarm goes up there is no one else. They did not ask for a reception. But they should not have been pointedly excluded from one held in honour of the very work they did.
The Prime Minister has called a National Wildfire Summit for later this year. That summit cannot be credible if it repeats the same mistake. The people who manage the uplands, who hold the equipment, the local knowledge and the manpower that the fire service relied upon this summer, must be at the table and not outside it.
This needs to be put right. A public acknowledgement of the gamekeepers' contribution, and an invitation to the summit, would cost nothing. Continuing to pretend they were not there will cost a great deal more, because next summer the fires will come again, and the people on the fire line will remember who thanked them and who did not.
