The Chief Scientist Speaks

Traditional moorland management involves cool rotational burning in areas that are suitable and at times and in conditions that mean it can be done safely. This is an ancient practice that has become progressively refined to ensure that it fulfils its purposes of creating greater biodiversity and reducing the risk and severity of wildfire. It has just been made illegal by government – acting on the advice of Natural England (NE) – over 1.6 million acres of the English uplands.

The timing of this could not be worse. For most of the year the scenery has been on fire. By August this year over 40,000 hectares, (nearly 100,000 acres) of the English uplands had burnt to ash. The people who will no longer be allowed to use rotational cool burning to protect their land and the underlying peat are understandably upset. They think that being forced to stop protecting their property and its wildlife, in a way that has worked for generations, is frankly stupid. Given the circumstances of 100,000 acres of wildfire in England alone, the changing weather patterns, and the increasing frequency of hot, dry summers, it is hardly surprising that they feel that way or that local communities agree with them.

They have been told by NE, by Defra, and by the minister, that they should not worry. It will all be alright. Their multi-generational knowledge and experience of managing these landscapes can be safely ignored. NE have discovered a magic solution: Wet and Walk Away. You take the sheep off, stop burning and block up any drainage gullies, the peat gets wetter, and wildfire becomes impossible.

The practitioners are so dim that they don't believe this. Can you imagine? Someone from NE who has no direct knowledge of wildfire or moorland management tells these people that they have found a magic way to prevent wildfire, and they don't believe it. Really, what is the world coming to? So, we have a problem. There is a continuing fuss being made about stopping one of the few means by which wildfire risk can be reduced at a time when, to paraphrase Julie Andrews, 'The hills are alive with the sound of wildfire'.

There is even talk that NE, who are responsible for the change, should be held responsible for the consequences of the change. That will never do. Power without responsibility is what they like. The private landowners and farmers can deal with the real world consequences. These can be large. In a less conflagatory year, 2019, wildfires cost UK farmers £32 million. If NE had to pay for the problems that their policy will cause it would make a dent in their £315,000,000 budget – so it's far better to bankrupt a few farmers.

However the fuss is not going away, so NE have taken the unprecedented step of getting their Chief Scientist, Professor Sallie Bailey, to write a blog to tell us how the magic works.

Unfortunately, Sallie is not an expert on wildfire. Indeed, it is probable that she has never seen one, but not knowing anything about wildfire is an NE specialism. So far as can be ascertained no one in NE, until very recently, had any responsibility for knowing anything about wildfire because it was nothing to do with NE. NE merely create the conditions conducive to wildfire ignition and severity. When one occurs, it is the Local Authority Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) that fights the fire and, along with the landowner, pick up the bill.

Not being an expert and having no practical knowledge or experience is of course no barrier for NE. So we now have a definitive version of the magic. We even have photographs of it working. Well, we actually have photographs that claim to show its working, which is a very different thing.

There are several of the National Trust land at Marsden Moor. Regular followers of this column or even people who have even a passing interest in wildfire will understand what a daring choice this is. Marsden burns so often that it is said that the locals no longer consider the swallow to be a harbinger of spring, it is the sound of the fire engines going up to the moor for the first fire of the year that confirms that spring is here.

There are photographs that show wet, mossy bits, and we learn that wet, mossy bits don't burn as long as they are wet and mossy. Obviously Sallie doesn't dwell on what happens if they are dry and mossy, the sort of thing that happens in a hot, summer drought, but let's not spoil the magic. But what is surprising is a photograph that is said to show that a blocked gully stopped a wildfire in its tracks. Have a look. It is so tiny that it could not have stopped anything. It is frankly a joke, The fact that there is a little gully between the the burnt and unburnt is obviously irrelevant to anyone who has ever fought a fire. It was stopped at the gully. The gully didn't stop it, there is a world of difference.

Then there is RSPB Dove Stone. This time it is an aerial photograph and it is accompanied by the following statement.

A few miles away in Dove Stone Nature Reserve outside Oldham, a wildfire started in 2018 on neighbouring dry, heather-dominated land before spreading onto the reserve. The more diverse, damp vegetation slowed the fire down enough for it to be stopped by a moss-filled gully located on United Utilities/RSPB land. Although the fire wouldn’t have died out completely by itself, the change from dry peat to the wetter Sphagnum-dominated gullies of Dove Stone meant that the height and heat of the flames reduced sufficiently for human action to bring it under control.

Nothing demonstrates the complete lack of understanding, and even worse, the lack of interest, than this nonsense. We have heard this before. We have even been up and walked the site with the people who fought the fire to a standstill, which did not include NE. 

A wet gully a couple of hundred yards long did not stop a wildfire that burnt for 3 weeks over 14 square kilometres. The fire was brought under control by courageous people who were eventually helped by a change of wind direction that enabled them to manage it back to a natural cliff edge where it ran out of fuel.

When you are fighting wildfire you use any advantage the ground gives you. A road or track, a gully, wet or dry, a cliff edge, anything, but it is profoundly misleading to claim a wet gully at Dove Stone enabled the fire to be beaten. It didn't.

The RSPB know this perfectly well, and presumably so do some people in NE. Anyone with any knowledge of wildfire can see at once that the claim that this little gully actually stopped the wildfire is a cruel hoax. Anyone with an ounce of decency would be ashamed to claim such a thing, and yet the NE Chief Scientist has happily done so. We are at a loss to think of a worse example of deliberately misleading the public on a matter of national importance.

The idea that Wet and Walk Away will naturally prevent wildfire is ridiculous beyond words and unwittingly poor Sallie has demonstrated it in her blog. She references the terrible Canadian wildfires of 2023. Were these on a grouse moor covered in heather? Were they on a moor drained for improved sheep pasture? No. They were on undrained peatland of precisely the sort she says will not burn. Hundreds of miles from civilization, undrained blanket bog; and it burnt and burnt and burnt.

Never have we seen such nonsense from such a source.