The UK faces threats from wildfires, which are a growing risk as climate change intensifies and weather patterns become more extreme. A new parliamentary briefing has laid out different likelihood and impact scenarios for wildfires in UK landscapes – peatlands, woodlands, agricultural areas and rural-urban spaces – and offers practical actions to mitigate the threat of these dramatic events.

Andreas Heinemeyer, an associate professor at SEI York, was asked to both contribute to and review the briefing, based on his research expertise in peatland management. Heinemeyer told the report authors that controlled burning is a vital tool for managing peatland vegetation, but warned that where wildfires burn uncontrolled they can be very destructive to these important habitats. “How policymakers and land managers choose to manage high-risk landscapes such as heather moorlands will be key to navigating the growing threat from wildfires,” Heinemeyer said.

In the briefing, stakeholders offered different solutions for protecting peatlands from wildfire. Vegetation on peatlands can be cut or grazed to reduce potential fuel loads or it can be cut to create fire breaks; it can also be burned under specific conditions, especially where the landscape is too rocky or steep to be cut. “Rewetting” is the process of making peat bogs wetter by blocking up historic drainage ditches and other measures; advocates of rewetting as a management tool say it could help avoid the need for controlled burning, without other interventions needed.

“Though some report contributors have advocated for total bans on controlled heather burning, claiming that rewetting moors will suffice for management, I and many others disagree with this approach based on the available evidence,” Heinemeyer said. Rewetting on its own as a mitigation measure against peatland wildfires may not work in certain situations, given site-specific limitations, such as areas with steeper slopes.

“We also know even less about the impacts of heather cutting than prescribed fire,” Heinemeyer commented. His Peatland-ES-UK project might provide useful conclusions by 2032.

Currently, peatland management practices and scientific evidence are not in full alignment. Research from multiple sources shows that peatlands differ in their potential wetness and vegetation cover, regardless of whether they are subject to controlled burns. This could be their topography, rainfall or underlying geology. Heinemeyer’s and others’ research has also indicated that humans have used controlled burning to manage peatlands for thousands of years, and that this burning can actually improve biodiversity and protect various other functions of peatlands at a landscape level over the longer term.

“Research which my team and I have completed on the Peatland-ES-UK project since 2012 indicates that one-size-fits-all approaches are unhelpful, and leaving vegetation unmanaged can be, in the long term, potentially harmful to the landscapes we are trying to protect,” he said.

Effectively protecting the peat underneath heather moorland is not just a win for habitat preservation: peatlands are vital carbon stores and have the capacity to act as carbon sinks. Though a controlled burn does release carbon initially, the implications of a wildfire are far worse: instead of consuming just the vegetation at the surface, as in a controlled burn, wildfires burn with such intensity that they can travel deep into the peat, scorching it dry and potentially damaging peatlands beyond repair.

The decisions made around how to manage peatlands for wildfire mitigation will have important ramifications for land management and climate legislation all over the UK: policymakers must get this right using evidence-based advice, Heinemeyer commented. The UK Home Office has committed to scoping a Wildfire Strategy and Action Plan by mid-2024. Meanwhile, the 20-year Peatland-ES-UK project will continue, with expected final conclusions in 2032.