Gamekeeper, 79, honoured for 25-day fight against Dava wildfire

A former head gamekeeper who worked for 25 days on Scotland’s largest recorded wildfire has been honoured by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association at Moy Country Fair. Davie Taylor, 79, of Logie, received a one-off award for outstanding services to conservation and community, presented by SGA chairman Alex Hogg.

What did Davie Taylor do at the Dava fire?

The Dava fire of summer 2025, which merged with the blaze near Carrbridge, became the largest wildfire recorded in Scotland and burned across roughly 11,800 hectares of moorland, peatland and woodland. By the time Mr Taylor and colleagues were working on it, it had already taken 85% of Dunphail.

He put in three days of round-the-clock firefighting, then a further 22 days on the aftermath, dousing and digging out burning peat with 5-gallon drums of water drawn from a burn, spades, axes and chainsaws, until the ground was finally cold. He had broken his back some years earlier.

Why is peat so hard to put out?

A summer wildfire does not simply run across the surface. It burns down into the peat and follows tree roots below ground, where water alone does little.

Gamekeeper Davie Thomson, who attended the ceremony, said: “He just stuck at it, day after day, at nearly 80 years old. He wasn’t going to leave peat burning there. Summer wildfires burn down into peat and Davie was digging out the peat and cutting out tree roots that send the fire down into the peat. He was filling up five-gallon drums, sticking them on the Argo and driving to wherever the hotspots were.”

Mr Taylor was characteristically brief about it. “It is just something you do,” he said. “There’s no point just putting water on peat fires. If you are not digging the smouldering peat out, all you are doing is creating steam.”

Fergus Ewing, who held Inverness and Nairn from the Scottish Parliament’s creation in 1999 until losing the seat at this year’s election, and who latterly sat as an independent, received the Ronnie Rose Award. “Gamekeepers are the beating heart of rural Scotland,” he said.

He used the platform to warn that muirburn licensing would make wildfires worse, arguing that “so-called ’rewilded’ estates” where controlled burning is not practised and firebreaks are not kept clear become “a gigantic rural tinderbox”, and calling on the Scottish Government to drop the scheme. Ministers have already delayed the scheme once, to September 2026, on wildfire-response grounds, but have not agreed to drop it.

He used the platform to warn that muirburn licensing would make wildfires worse, arguing that estates where controlled burning is not practised and firebreaks are not kept clear become “a gigantic rural tinderbox”, and calling on the Scottish Government to drop the scheme. The Scottish Government has not accepted that argument and the licensing regime is being implemented.

Edwin Third, river operations manager on the Dee, received an SGA Fishing Group award for wild salmon conservation for his part in riparian restoration work including the Save the Spring campaign.

Moy Country Fair runs on 7 and 8 August at Moy, south of Inverness, with BASC Scotland running the Junior Macnab Challenge over the two days. The wider argument about how Scotland prepares for wildfire continues, with up to £3m announced for businesses hit by this summer’s Cairngorms fire and land managers pressing for money to be spent on prevention as well.

Moy Country Fair runs on 7 and 8 August at Moy, south of Inverness, with BASC Scotland running the Junior Macnab Challenge over the two days. The wider argument about how Scotland prepares for wildfire continues, with a £3 million recovery fund now open to businesses hit by this summer’s Cairngorms fire and land managers pressing for money to be spent on prevention as well.