The situation surrounding this year's non-stop wildfires is not just shameful, but also shameless

You would have to have spent the spring in a cave in Patagonia to be unaware that this has been a very bad year for wildfire. When we say very bad, we mean probably the worst in history. We have never had a year like this.

The poor old Peak District has had over 30 wildfires, some of them large by any standards. Nationally, last month the Moorland Association calculated that the cost to the public purse, up till then, was around £350 million. Things have become so bad that the subject was debated in the House of Lords.

What on earth is happening? Is it the weather? Of course weather plays a part. Most things, including moorland, don't burn in the rain. But we have had hot, dry years before. Dry springs aren't rare, and never have been. Something else must be happening. It can't just be the universal excuse for inaction and incompetence: climate change.

The pandemic saw a change in peoples' attitudes. More people are driving into the countryside and using it for purposes for which it was never intended. There is a sense of entitlement that says, 'Forget sandwiches and a flask of tea, we will cook a meal where and when we like'. To that can be added sheer numbers. Last year 13 million people visited the Peak District. If only half went onto the moors, and only 1% were selfish or stupid, which is probably optimistic, you have 65,000 potential ignitions.

What about the fuel? Again, it is pretty obvious. The RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts and the National Trust have all adopted the 'Wet and Walk Away' system, and Natural England is using all its considerable power to force private landowners to do the same. Sheep numbers have been reduced by edict, so vegetation is not removed by grazing. Rotational cool burning is being made almost impossible by Natural England, and cutting is often impractical even if you can get permission to do it. As a result, fuel loads have never been greater or more continuous.

Faced with more risk of ignition, and more fuel, any sensible person would predict that given a dry spring we would have a lot of really damaging wildfires. This spring has shown that those sensible person were right... hasn't it? 

No, not according to the new self-appointed conservation elite. Faced with the abject failure of the 'Wet and Walk Away' system, they have come up with a new wheeze. The wildfires that have swept over the land aren't a problem after all. They are proof that they were right all along.

The Goyt valley burnt for days this spring. Ironically, a million pound scheme to rewet it had just been completed. To any rational person that would be an embarrassment. But the Peatland Restoration Industry is made of sterner stuff. Watching vast amounts of tax payers money burn to black ash would make most people question if the strategy that had led to this, and so many similar environmental catastrophes was a bit dodgy. Not them. There is too much money, and too many nice jobs riding on the dark art of peatland restoration for them to blink.

The new strategy is to tell the world that rewetting stopped the fire. If they had not spent millions creating something the locals said was a wildfire waiting to happen, just think how bad it would have been. If they hadn't spent millions building little dams at the bottom of erosion gullies, including of course admin and contingency costs, it would have been far worse.

Newspapers, social media, radio and TV have all been haunted by employees of the Peatland Restoration Industry telling the world that if it hadn't been for them it would have been a disaster. The fact that normal people thought that what happened in the Goyt, and elsewhere, was the very definition of a disaster, only shows how little they know. In fact it was a success.

What is going on is so blatant as to take an honest man's breath away. The formula is as simple as it is brass-necked. Find a wet gully to stand in, and shamelessly state that it stopped the fire. The interviewer, who naturally knows nothing about wildfire suppression, is deeply impressed, and appears not to notice that both sides of the gully are black ash down to the water level, which any country-person would have realised meant that the one thing the little gully definitely didn't do was stop the fire.

It is actually difficult to watch. Real people fought these fires. Fires made far, far worse by the abandonment of traditional vegetation management. They came home with red eyed, stinking of smoke, hot, exhausted and glad to be uninjured and alive. They have seen not a single person from the Peatland Restoration Industry, or Natural England. These heroes always come later, when the heat and danger are all gone. They come not to fight the fire. They come to exploit it for credit and money.

Imagine what a firefighter, a farmer or gamekeeper, who has been fighting the fire for days, and who has finally beaten it, feels when a suitably emotional Peatland Restorer pops up on the TV, and tells the world that they – and sphagnum moss – saved the day. Why would anyone behave like that? Well it seems that money may be at the bottom of it. Vast sums have been set aside by government to restore peatland,  A tiny elite intend to have the lions share. Whatever happens nothing must get in the way.

Making up nonsense is a small price to pay when you consider the sums being talked about. The IUCN Peatland Code documents tell us that 80% of our peatland is damaged. They estimate that it will cost between £8 billion and £22 billion to repair it – but don't worry, there will be benefits of between £45 billion and £51 billion as a result.

It is obvious that this is fantasy. Much of what they define as 'damaged' is either part of a natural cycle or so minor as to be undetectable to a casual observer. What you get for £22 billion is blocked grips and gullies, re-vegetated bare peat and re-profiled hags. There is nothing wrong with that except the price. Anything the experts would charge you a billion for could be done by farmers and local estate workers for a tenth of the cost or less.

The benefits are equally illusory and definitely not cash-able. They consist largely of avoided costs. Reduced flooding is worth a lot of money. If we give them a billion to repair damaged peatland, we won't have to spend 2 billion on flood recovery or defence. There is no evidence. In the Peak District where vast sums have already been spent, flooding shows no sign of abating. It is just what you can say to get money from fools because no one can argue. When the rivers still flood, just say its because there is still work to do, and demand more cash.

But wildfire is a problem because the big money is for capital works. Things you do once, and walk away. The people who intend to get the £22 billion have no interest in managing or continuing involvement. It is all do it once, and walk away. No residual responsibility. No continuing involvement. Someone else can sort out the mess when the convenient theory turns out to be wrong.

If they were ever to admit that what they are doing creates a landscape that requires continuing management to keep it safe, the whole scheme would collapse. That is why they are now claiming that vast, damaging wildfires are not a problem, as long as you give them vast sums to use helicopters to put some stones in the bottom of a six foot deep erosion gullies. All will be well. In their topsy turvy world, the fact that 'Wet and Walk Away' results in a predicted increase in wildfires is no longer a problem, because they no longer do any real damage.

The tragedy is that the people who have successfully managed these landscapes for generations and largely kept their vast stores of carbon safe from wildfire, know perfectly well what is needed to reduce the risk and mitigate any effects. The Peatland Restoration Industry ignores, ridicules and demonises them, for no better reason than they don't want the policy makers to realise that continuing management is essential.

Intelligent, informed, practical people with generational knowledge of how these landscapes can be kept safe are having to watch as fools and charlatans destroy the places they and their families have loved and tended for centuries. What is going on is not just shameful, it is shameless, and they must be stopped before we waste billions on something that any sensible person can see makes things worse.