Power without responsibility- the prerogative of Natural England

It is very simple:

Our heather moorlands are internationally recognised as the jewel in the crown of UK landscapes. They are globally very rare, rarer than tropical rain forest, and the UK has the lion's share of the earth's stock of this habitat. Yet for decades one idiot civil servant after another has tried to get rid of them. The people who own them have been offered public money to fence them, drain them, cover them in roads and tracks, plant them with conifers and overgraze them.

Incredibly, they have survived. This is largely because people value them as grouse moors, and have resisted the incentives to wreck them. The moors that have survived more or less intact have done so because their owners have continued to manage them as they have been managed for at least a thousand years; in many cases much longer. They have been grazed, and the above-ground vegetation has been burnt on a 10-30 year cycle, depending on how fast the vegetation grows.

This management has maintained a habitat mosaic which supports the unique species and ecosystems associated with the landscape, and critically, in the context of climate change, suppressed wildfire and kept the vast stores of carbon in the underlying peat safe.

So, it is indeed simple. You have something globally rare and priceless that is being managed to keep it safe and healthy at no cost to the public purse. What could possibly go wrong?

When convenient theory trumps reality

The RSPB used to be perfectly happy with cool rotational burning, and so was the government. RSPB varied out rotational burning themselves and wrote pamphlets extolling its benefits. A previous Government's Environmental Stewardship Agreements (ESA) required moorland managers to burn 10% of the moor annually, on pain of losing their payments. These positions, which seem unbelievable now, had the advantage that they worked. The biodiversity of the moors was maintained and enhanced, and damaging wildfires were rare, whatever the weather.

All that has changed completely. Despite heather moorland being a globally rare habitat, earmarked for special protection at the Rio Biodiversity Summit in 1992, NE now consider abundant heather to be undesirable on most peatland. They also take the view that any peat deeper than 30 cm – roughly the thickness of a bag of peat in a garden centre – must be regarded as blanket bog, and treated as such. Finally they believe that if you re-wet peat deeper than 30cm it will become blanket bog, and become invulnerable to wildfire risk.

The practitioners, the farmers, shepherds, gamekeepers, Fire and Rescue staff, and even some wildlife reserve staff (confidentially of course) think this is crazy. How can hundreds of acres of sloping ground that has never been drained be re-wet? If, in a real bog, you can see that after twenty rainless days the underlying peat is dry enough to burn, why does anyone think it won't?

There are two views

The practitioners say that  if you want to keep these places safe, and their precious carbon stores intact, you need to continue to use all the traditional tools and methods, including rotational cool burning.

The conservation industry claims that if you block up the drainage grips, you can safely stop all management, walk away and let nature sort itself out without the slightest increase to the risk and severity of wildfire.

Is there a way of knowing who is right?

It's early days yet. The 'Wet and Walk Away' system has only been around for a few years. Vegetation in the uplands grows slowly. We have yet to see the full effect, but we have surely seen enough. This year is a dry one, after a couple of wet years that flattered Wet and Walk Away, and we are already into uncharted territory. As we write this there have already been more wildfires in 2025, and over a greater acreage, than in any year in recorded history.

Even before this catastrophic year (and remember it's still only April), the list of huge wildfires on land where traditional vegetation management has been stopped was long, and costly. The RSPB's reserves at Forsinard, Corrimony, and Dovestones all burnt, releasing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO2. The Dovestones have burnt again, despite RSPB being given money by NE to set up fire watches.

Winterhill, Darwin, Moray, and Stalybridge, where the regulator and others had stopped vegetation management, all burnt for days releasing over a million tonnes of CO2 and costing millions to put out. 

On National Trust land, wildfires on Wet and Walk Away in the Peak District are now so regular and predictable that they are in danger of being advertised as a tourist attraction. Saddleworth, Howden and dear old Marsden, that has more wildfires than California, are just a few examples.

When will the madness stop?

A child could look at the evidence and draw the only conclusion possible. The theory that you can wet and walk away without a greater risk of wildfire is convenient nonsense. In many cases it is simply mad. There are vast areas of moorland with peat over 30 cm deep that have never been drained. Hiring a helicopter at tax payers' expense to put some rocks in the bottom of a six foot deep natural erosion gully in the middle of 1000 acres of sloping heather moor may be fun. It may even make you feel better – but it is entirely pointless.

Pretending that as a result you can stop vegetation management and there will be no risk of wildfire is a form criminal lunacy. When it burns – and it will be a question of when, not if – the people responsible will be the conservation and rewilding industry and their allies in NE. But they will get away scot free.

The National Trust or RSPB will simply run another fundraising appeal, and make a profit from their own mismanagement. NE don't turn a hair. When there is a wildfire you never see them because it's nothing to do with them. The cost falls on the Fire and Rescue Service and that is a Local Authority function. So the local council pays, not the NE heroes who caused the catastrophe. Truly, power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot.