Controlled burning is needed to keep wildfires at bay - Robbie Moore

This summer has been the hottest on record and there have been significant consequences of this extended period of heat. First among them has been the wildfires we’ve seen breaking out across the length and breadth of Britain.

With the impacts of climate change rising year on year, it is the responsibility of everybody to do whatever we can to decrease the chance of uncontrollable fires breaking out. Those combating this risk need all the tools at their disposal.

That is why the Conservatives rightly opposed Labour’s ban of the controlled, rotational burning of heather on moorland, brought forward last September.

While debates about land management have become increasingly polarised in recent years, we have to be able to separate ideology from evidence.

There are those who have been keen to portray heather burning as environmentally damaging, but done responsibly, backed by scientific evidence and sound environmental land management advice, nothing could be further from the truth.

The key distinction is between controlled burning and uncontrolled fire. Managed, rotational burns are conducted in specific seasons and weather conditions, ensuring that excess vegetation is removed at low temperatures and in a controlled manner. The objective of doing so is to reduce the amount of older, drier, highly flammable vegetation.

Across our uplands, including much of the Yorkshire moorland, this vegetation accumulates over time. In dry spells, or droughts like we are currently experiencing, it becomes a tinderbox.

When an ignition occurs under those circumstances, a wildfire can spread rapidly, burns at extreme temperatures and quickly becomes uncontrollable. Wildfires are intense, they will penetrate far deeper into the vegetation, but also into the underlying peatland, releasing huge amounts of stored carbon into the atmosphere.

We only have to look back to last September to see this, when much of the North York Moors were on fire, or more recently on Marsden Moor, or Silsden Moor in my own constituency.

This is the stark difference. Controlled, rotational burning undertaken as part of land management and conservation strategy, doesn’t burn the peat. Wildfires do.

Wildfires also threaten animal habitats, homes, and most importantly – human lives.

Fuel load management is important to prevent this occurring. By reducing combustible vegetation, we can lower the intensity and spread of wildfires.

It can also create natural firebreaks that make fighting fires easier when they occur.

Concerns about biodiversity shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Controlled burns will not be appropriate everywhere. And it should also never be viewed in isolation.

It is one tool within a broader land management arsenal that includes grazing, cutting, rewetting and habitat restoration.

The question is not whether there should ever be fire on our uplands – it should be if we allow fuel loads to get too great to allow a devastating wildfire, how do we manage that risk responsibly.

And I firmly take the view that responsible managed rotational burning of heather should be an option. This is also a view shared by the National Fire Chiefs Council.

The problem we face is these decisions are being made by faceless bureaucrats in Whitehall, instead of those who know and manage the land.