The wet cold spring and summer has played havoc with our upland birds. Rarely has the sun shone and the ground shown any sign of drying out. It has been a bad year for those who love the uplands and their rich and rare ecosystems.
However there has been one tiny benefit. It has been so wet that the risk of wildfire has been much lower than in recent years. There was of course a wildfire at Marsden early on, but as that has become a spring time tradition, it hardly counts. So, as one wet day followed another, we avoided the worst. At least until last week. Then after just a few pleasantly warm days Meltham went up in flames.
Meltham is a grouse moor, but like so many moors it is impacted by the prejudices of the conservation industry. It will surprise few of those reading this that the syndicate who shoot the moor have not been allowed to manage the vegetation by rotational cool burning for nearly a decade. As a result there was a continuous landscape of long rank vegetation.
FRS have been very clear about what the problem is, and how wildfire risk can be minised
The FRS (Fire and Rescue Service) is in no doubt about what a threat this complete lack of management poses to the landscape and to our vital carbon stores. They have been very clear about what the problem is and what needs to be done. That is hardly surprising as they have had to deal with the consequences of the abandonment of moorland management so often that they must despair of the fools who are responsible.
In 2018, following the Winter Hill catastrophe where a wildfire burnt for 41 days at enormous public cost, considerable danger, and releasing vast quantities of CO2, the FRS were asked to give advice to the Upland Partnership, a body that includes amongst its members the conservation industry organisations that own or manage all the moors where the wildfires occurred in 2019 and 2020.
The advice that the FRS gave was clear. As a consequence of the practice of rotational cool burning having been stopped on Winter Hill, there had been no fuel load reduction, no functional fire-breaks and no mosaic of shorter vegetation, or anything else to impede the fire. The FRS report states with chilling simplicity that: 'The fire, supported by an easterly wind, spread rapidly through a continuous arrangement of surface fuels … its rate of spread at the head part of the fire reaching approximately 1000 metres per hour.'
The FRS identified several major challenges that had contributed to the disaster and which, in the FRS expert's view, needed to be addressed. The first three on the list were:
1. Unbroken and continuous arrangement of vegetation across the landscape.
2. Combustible ground fuels.
3. High surface and ground fuels.
The FRS also listed additional risk factors such as 'Deep seated fires in the peat layer' and 'Limited access to and across the landscape'.
The report concluded with the clear statement that 'The combination of very supportive weather and the presence of high fuel loads on the landscape presented the FRS with the most difficult wild land fire fighting operation ever encountered in NW England.'
This level of stupidity almost beggars belief
Interestingly, the recipients of these clear and unequivocal views appear to have carried on as though nothing had happened. They appear to treat what the FRS keep saying as nonsense. They appear completely disinterested in the considered opinion of the people who have to fight the fires made more likely, and worse when they occur, by their refusal to listen or act.
The results are both tragic and obvious. The fire at Meltham is what you get. Thank God Meltham came in a brief break of dry weather during an otherwise soggy summer. If it had come in the very supportive weather experienced at Winter Hill, it might still be burning.
The official view of NE and its friends in the conservation industry is that there is no need to reduce fuel loads. There is no need for fire breaks. There is no need for access routes to get fire fighters into places where they can safely fight fires. All these things are unnecessary because if you rewet the moors they will not burn.
This level of purblind stupidity almost beggars belief. It is not complicated. Have a look. They keep burning.
Many moors, and large parts of others, can't be re-wet because they were never drained in the first place. Even the re-wetted moors burn. After two or three weeks without rain, they will burn, sometimes worse than if they had never been rewet. This not a theory. Darwen had received the full re-wetting treatment when everything burnt, including the turf dams that were theoretically holding in the wetness that would stop a wildfire.
It didn't work. It doesn't work. Go and look. Just get out of the office and go and look.
Meltham had received the Moors For The Future treatment. It didn't stop it burning, and may have made it worse by making the sward denser and more continuous. The National Park won't consider access routes, even concealed ones for emergency vehicles, in case the grouse syndicate uses them. As a result an FRS argocat overturned on the way to the fire and an ambulance had to be called – but obviously the ambulance couldn't get anywhere near the problem either.
Rotational cool burning is banned and, because of the rocky terrain and bad access, cutting is not an option. Since covid the area has been used and abused by the general public more than ever before.
This was not an accident waiting to happen. It was a manufactured catastrophe. Put together all the elements and this was always going to happen. Risk of initial combustion high. Fuel load high and continuous. Access almost non-existent. Which bit are we missing?
If an infant can work it out. Why can't NE? Why can't the National Park? Why can't the conservation industry? They know alright. They are just in complete denial. They don't want to lose face by having to admit that their strategy of rewilding or abandoning management is a disaster for wildlife, landscape, carbon and human safety. Their refusal to do the right thing when they are responsible for one wildfire after another is shameful.
Is shameful too strong a word? We think not. Remember what RSPB told the Heritage Lottery Fund when they wanted £244,052.00 to do work on a moor in north Wales?
“Blanket bog restoration, heather management and conifer removal will create a mosaic of habitats for black grouse and restore the ecosystem benefits of a biodiverse landscape. It will reduce flooding and wildfires”.
Strange old world isn't it? According to RSPB, heather management is essential to reduce wildfires in north Wales, but apparently not in the Peak district.
The awful truth is they have been told. They know. They understand. But where a grouse moor is concerned they just deny, deny, deny. They would rather see it black and burnt than admit that they are wrong.
How many times do wildfires have to destroy vast carbon stores and burn a landscape to black ash before they listen? All the recent big wildfires have been on moorland where the conservation industry or NE have stopped traditional vegetation management: Saddleworth, Darwen, Winter Hill, Dove Stones, Crowsden, Stalybridge, Marsden (repeatedly) and now Meltham.
What will it take to stop this madness? Does someone have to get seriously injured or worse before these smug fools admit that they might not know better than the professionals/
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