Moorland Association challenges Rewilding Britain wildfire claims

The Moorland Association has challenged the evidence behind a new Rewilding Britain report claiming that rewilding reduces wildfire risk, publishing six questions it says the report must answer. The association notes the study found only one of 285 Rewilding Network projects affected by wildfire between March and August 2026, but argues the comparison proves little: the network covers about 1% of Britain, no baseline of comparable managed sites is offered, and “directly affected” is never defined.

What are the six questions about?

The association says the report measures neither fuel loads nor fire severity, draws its burnt-area data from a European system that mainly maps fires of about 30ha and larger, does not separate young restoration projects from mature ones, and rests its four UK upland peat examples on web pages and press releases rather than peer-reviewed site studies. It also points to counter-evidence: burning rotations under 20 years keeping biomass below that of 50-year unburnt stands, a long-term blanket-bog experiment in which burning reduced heather and increased cotton-grass and Sphagnum, and Scottish experimental fires in which drought lifted dry-heath soil-surface temperatures from 31°C to 189°C while saturated bog moved only 10°C to 15°C.

The association agrees with parts of the report, that people start most wildfires, that wetter peatland is harder to burn and that grazing breaks up fuel, and notes the report itself cites the association’s estimate of up to £460 million in wildfire costs in 2025. Its conclusion is that recovering moors will need mown firebreaks, grazing buffers and active fuel management for decades while peat rewets.

The letter in The Times

The challenge follows a letter in The Times on Saturday, 10 October from Andrew Gilruth, chief executive of the Moorland Association, backing Merseyside chief fire officer Phil Garrigan’s call for more firefighters while arguing prevention must include the vegetation itself. “Recent wetter and milder winters have encouraged vegetation growth, while successive governments have pursued policies that have reduced grazing and restricted controlled winter burning,” Mr Gilruth wrote. “The resulting accumulation of fuel needs urgent attention. Leaving fuel to accumulate is itself a decision with consequences.” The association’s modelling puts the growth in upland vegetation since 2005 at 1.5 million tonnes, which it describes as an extra tonne of potential wildfire fuel every seven minutes for two decades, and it wants fuel management on the agenda of the Prime Minister’s forthcoming wildfire summit.

What happens next

The data gap is now a matter of record at Westminster: in a written answer on 13 October, the environment department confirmed that figures for the carbon released by wildfires on peat, or saved by the heather and grass burning regulations, “are not available”. Rewilding Britain has not yet responded publicly to the six questions, and the association says it will keep pressing ahead of the wildfire summit.