We've Hit Wildfire Season Again. How Can Britain Become More Resilient?

Wildfires are no longer something we associate only with southern Europe, Australia or California. They are happening here in the UK, across landscapes that were not always managed with today’s fire risk in mind.

Dava Wildfires 2025: The Aftermath © Anne Burgess, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph.

At the time of writing, a wildfire is burning in the Cairngorms in Scotland, and just days ago, farmers Jay Loft, 22, and Cameron Bartram, 18, ploughed a firebreak through wheat fields near York in minutes, helping to stop a blaze before it reached nearby homes. It's a timely reminder of how quickly our climate is changing, how quickly fire can move, and how much of a difference rapid, local action can make.

Preventing wildfires, however, still starts with the basics: avoiding disposable barbecues and open fires on dry land, disposing of cigarettes safely, taking litter home and reporting smoke immediately. In the UK, many wildfires are linked to human activity, so reducing avoidable ignitions remains one of the most effective things we can do.

But as hot, dry spells become more frequent, preventing ignitions must be accompanied by greater attention to the condition and resilience of the land itself. How much water the landscape holds - and how continuous its dry vegetation is - can influence whether a spark becomes a contained fire or a major incident.

What Makes A Landscape Burn

Grasses, heather, bracken, scrub, leaf litter and dead plant material can become highly combustible during prolonged dry weather. Where large areas of this fuel are connected, fire may spread rapidly, particularly in hot and windy conditions.

The soil beneath vegetation matters too. A healthy, functioning peatland with a high water table behaves very differently from one that's been drained and allowed to dry. Plus topography, vegetation type, land-use history and management can all influence how a fire starts, moves and intensifies. This means wildfire isn't just an emergency-response problem; it's a question of ecology, land management and climate adaptation.

Keeping Water In The Landscape

Restoring natural systems that hold water is one of the clearer ways we may be able to reduce a landscape’s vulnerability to drought and fire. Wet woodlands and wooded river corridors can slow water movement, support infiltration and help create cooler, more humid conditions. Tree roots can improve soil structure, while canopy shade may reduce evaporation and help soils retain moisture for longer. These effects still depend on tree species, soils, hydrology and the wider catchment context, so the same approach won't work on every site.

Beavers can reinforce some of these processes by building dams and creating ponds, wetlands and networks of channels that store water locally. Evidence for their role in fire resilience is still drawn largely from North American catchments, and their effects vary between sites. The findings are promising rather than proven at a UK scale, but the wetter habitats they create may provide valuable refuges for wildlife during drought and fire.

Peatlands deserve particular attention too. Many have been drained, burned, planted or otherwise altered, and dry peat is far more vulnerable to ignition. Peat fires are extremely difficult to extinguish because they can continue to smoulder beneath the surface. The 2018 Saddleworth Moor fire demonstrated how damaging and persistent a fire affecting peatland can become. Restoring degraded peatlands can involve blocking artificial drainage channels, raising water levels and helping bog vegetation, including sphagnum mosses, to recover. This isn't simply about making the landscape look greener; it's about rebuilding the hydrology that allows the ecosystem to function and reducing some of the conditions that can make degraded peat more vulnerable to fire.

Managing Vegetation Without Removing It

“Clear the vegetation” can feel like the instinctive response to fire risk, but stripped land loses many of the benefits that vegetation provides, including wildlife habitat, soil protection, carbon storage and water regulation. The focus should instead be on whether a landscape contains large, unbroken areas of dry, combustible vegetation, and how these can be managed without damaging the habitats we are trying to protect.

Lowland heath is a good example. It's a semi-natural habitat, shaped over centuries by the relationship between people, grazing animals, soils and vegetation. Traditional activities such as grazing, turf cutting and gathering firewood helped maintain areas of open heath. Over time, however, much of this habitat has been lost or fragmented through development and changing land use.

On some remaining heaths, the decline of traditional management practices has also allowed gorse, scrub and trees to spread across previously open areas.

Gorse itself is valuable habitat, providing food, shelter and nesting sites for wildlife. However, as gorse matures, dead woody material can accumulate beneath dense living growth, creating a substantial fuel load that can become highly combustible during periods of drought, particularly where older gorse forms large, continuous stands. A range of approaches can be used to manage heathland vegetation, each with potential benefits, limitations and ecological considerations:

Prescribed burning - This can be used to remove older vegetation, encourage new growth and reduce accumulated fuel in some circumstances. It is a long-established management tool, with evidence supporting its use in certain habitats and under carefully controlled conditions. However, there's ongoing debate about its potential effects on soils, carbon storage, water and wildlife, particularly where burns are poorly timed, too frequent or unsuited to the habitat. There is also uncertainty over how effectively prescribed burning reduces the severity of future wildfires.

Grazing and cutting - These approaches can help limit the build-up of older vegetation and create a more varied habitat structure. They can be tailored to the ecology and condition of a site and may avoid some of the risks associated with burning. However, their effects depend on factors such as grazing intensity, timing and the animals or machinery used. They can also be labour-intensive, costly and difficult to sustain at the scale required.

Neither approach is a universal answer. The right choice depends on the site (its soil, hydrology, wildlife, vegetation, history) and proximity to people and property. Some heathlands need continued, active management to maintain the varied structure on which their specialist wildlife depends. The aim is not to strip vegetation from the landscape, but to keep habitats varied and healthy while managing risk in ways that reflect the ecology of each site.

Building In Variety

Many healthy landscapes contain a varied mosaic of habitats, vegetation structures and moisture conditions. Where appropriate to the site, this variety may help interrupt some of the continuous fuel pathways through which fire can spread. It can also support a wider range of habitats and create wetter or more sheltered areas that may act as refuges for wildlife.

Variety alone, though, does not make a landscape fire-resilient. A wetland, for example, can only contribute to resilience if its hydrology is functioning, while poorly located or highly combustible vegetation may add to risk rather than reduce it.

Planning Before The Fire

Reducing wildfire risk depends on coordination between landowners, local authorities, fire and rescue services, conservation organisations and communities. This means assessing where fires are most likely to start and spread, identifying vulnerable habitats and communities, keeping emergency access routes clear, knowing where water is available, and considering how people use the land during periods of extreme heat and drought.

Communities can help directly by reporting neglected or damaged sites, supporting appropriate habitat management, sharing local fire warnings and reducing accumulations of dry vegetation close to buildings. The York firebreak also demonstrated the value of local knowledge, rapid action and access to the right machinery. Long-term landscape management cannot replace emergency preparedness, and emergency response cannot replace long-term resilience. We need both.

The Starting Point Is Understanding The Land

There’s no single template for a fire-resilient landscape. Planting trees will not be right everywhere; nor will burning, grazing, cutting or leaving land entirely unmanaged. What’s needed first is a clear picture of how fire is likely to behave in a particular place. Only then can we decide which combination of restoration, management and planning is appropriate.

As the climate changes, our landscapes will change too. Shifts in temperature, rainfall, drought and fire will affect which species and habitats are able to thrive in different places. Resilience may therefore mean not only protecting and restoring the landscapes we know today, but also giving nature the space and capacity to adapt.

While we cannot prevent every wildfire, reducing avoidable ignitions, restoring natural processes, keeping water in suitable landscapes and managing vegetation thoughtfully can reduce vulnerability and improve our ability to respond when fires occur.

Resilience is not about removing nature from the landscape. It is about understanding the landscape well enough to help nature, people and places withstand the changes that lie ahead.

Want to help us Green Up Britain?

🌱 Donate - every penny helps restore nature across the UK

🙋 Volunteer - join our growing community of helpers

🌳 Sponsor a tree - we'll plant on behalf of your company

Further Reading And Sources

1. Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service, Wildfire Safety Advice - The service notes that most wildfires are linked to human activity, whether accidental or deliberate. Read the wildfire safety guidance

2. Fairfax and Whittle, Beaver-Dammed Riparian Corridors Stay Green During Wildfire - This research is based in North America, so its relevance to UK landscapes should be considered carefully and on a site-by-site basis. Read the beaver and wildfire study

3. UK Parliament, Evidence on Peatland - Evidence concerning the condition and restoration of UK peatlands, including the effects of the 2018 Saddleworth Moor wildfire on peat soils. Read the peatland evidence

4. Moors for the Future Partnership, Moor Carbon - Information about restoring areas of peatland damaged by the 2018 wildfires and protecting exposed peat from further erosion and carbon loss. Read about post-wildfire peatland restoration

5. UK Government, Heather and Grass Burning in England - A government response examining the evidence and differing perspectives on managed burning, including its potential effects on peatland condition, carbon, water, biodiversity and wildfire risk. Read the government response and evidence summary

6. Rewilding Europe, Large Herbivores and Wildfire Risk - An overview of research exploring how grazing by large herbivores may influence vegetation structure, reduce the accumulation of combustible material and contribute to more varied landscapes. Read about the research into grazing and wildfire risk