Natural England upland adviser Sara Barrett continues to lecture wildfire practitioners with 'fantasy rewetting policy', even as new fires rage across Peak District.

2025 has already proven to be the worst for UK wildfires in recent times, according to satellite data from Global Wildfire Information System.

Since the start of 2025, more than 113 square miles (292 square km or 29,200 hectares) of land has been consumed by fires raging across the country.

Few places have been hit harder by these wildfires than the Peak District, with areas of unmanaged moorland, but under the guise of rewetting and rewilding, owned by the National Trust and United Utilities fairing particularly badly.

The National Trust has been one of the leading voices calling for ‘rewetting’ to be used across the uplands as a wildfire mitigation tool, whilst simultaneously calling for a ban on controlled burning. Whilst good on paper the issue has been proven, time and time again, simply not to work.

The National Trusts’ Marsden Moor, where rewetting has been trialled, has been nothing short of a disaster. Marsden has suffered from multiple wildfires over the last few years causing extensive ecological and environmental damage.

Yet, despite the problems of relying on rewetting being glaringly obvious, and the consistent warnings from fire and rescue service, those responsible for influencing policy on wildfires continue to call for a ban on controlled burning. This is despite the practice being widely recognised globally as the best wildfire mitigation tool.

As recently as yesterday, Sara Barrett, Land Management and Conservation Adviser for Natural England, launched an astonishing attack on the Peak District Moorland Group again claiming that rewetting was the answer, saying ‘Rewetting means restoring the hydrological function of deep peat habitats so that they can support a more characteristic vegetation…thus this is a long term and sustainable approach to combating the risks associated with climate change and unsolicited fires’.

Whilst that all sounds good on paper, the reality on the ground is completely different, as recent wildfires have shown. Barrett’s comments are not only dangerously oversimplified but completely fail to recognise the ecohydrological differences from site to site. 

Many 'upland advisors' seem to have suffered the same fate of believing what they say on paper in the academic world translates into practical habitat management. It does not and the consequence of this has been far larger wildfires.

During this time advisors like Barrett have chosen to not to listen to the advice of practitioners on the ground and instead dictated to those who have foreseen the impact of Natural England's actions.

Now that the wildfires have come back into the public spotlight the same upland advisors are now pleading for constructive dialogue, as the public rightly question what on earth is happening. In the business world failures of such magnitude would require a restructure of the entire team. Natural England must do some deep soul searching.

Indeed, as Sara Barrett was writing her comments on Facebook yesterday another wildfire was roaring in woodland owned by the Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust where ‘wilding' is a favourite management technique.

Furthermore Barrett goes on to claim that a  heather dominated landscape provides the high fuel load most at risk from wildfires. The vast majority of wildfires in the UK so far this year have actually taken place on grasslands, rather than heather. She, and her Natural England colleagues, know this.

The facts are clear. It is not the vegetation variety that determines the wildfire risk. It is the appropriate management of the land, which relies upon grazing and controlled burning.

Without these combined tools in use wildfires will continue to wreak havoc across the uplands, devastating ecological landscapes and undoubtedly causing fatalities along the way.