Firefighters record significant rise in wildfires reinforcing need for controlled burning

The summer of 2022 was the joint-hottest on record with widespread wildfires breaking out across the country at an unprecedented rate.

The Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue Service today announced that they were called to 970

outdoor incidents across four categories between June 1 and August 31, 2022. By contrast the service attended 395 similar incidents in the same timeframe last year.

Across the uplands many areas of land not managed by controlled heather burning became a tinder-box. At Marsden Moor, which is owned by the National Trust, their unwillingness to use controlled heather burning as a fire prevention tool likely lead to repeated wildfires causing devastating damage to wildlife and the environment.

Marsden was already no stranger to the worst impact of wildfires. In 2019 a wildfire there burnt for days, releasing thousands of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere and destroyed at least 300 hectares of rare habitat.

Another National Trust site, Brimham Rocks near Pateley Bridge, also suffered a wildfire damage in the summer. Yet still the National Trust are campaigning to have the ability to use controlled heather burning banned.

As the world continues to be impacted by climate change and our summers become increasingly hot and dry, we will continue to see wildfires breaking out.

Our best defence against these wildfires is controlled burning during the wet winter months. It may not always look pretty at the time, but there is a reason it is practiced all over the world and widely recognised as our best tool in preventing the worst of the damage caused by wildfires.

This is why it is so important certain selfish idiots, with an illogical agenda against moorland management, are ignored.