𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Former top cricketer Ian Botham should know a thing about ashes, but this time it’s not about beating Australia but DEFRA’s poor management of the countryside which is allowing wildfires to spark across the nation. Last week, Botham, now a member of the House of Lords, blasted the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) for its refusal to let land managers burn undergrowth to create fire breaks.

Just when the government is sending us phone alarms warning us not to act in reckless ways to cause fires, it turns out it is in fact the government itself is pursuing a green ideology that is making wildfires more likely. DEFRA’s commitment to rewilding, often against the advice of farmers and people who understand the landscape, is making parts of our countryside especially vulnerable to fire breaking out during hot summers.

The 371-acre blaze on Dunwich Heath in Suffolk last month has been blamed directly on the RSPB allowing the area to become a tinderbox thanks to its rewilding agenda. By not clearing brushwood from its site, it provided the fuel for an almost unstoppable fire storm. If the wind had blown from a different direction, claimed one resident, their village could have been engulfed as well.

Similarly, wildfires in Bordeaux this year have been blamed on the historic planting of pine trees for commercial reasons without understanding that pine resin feeds fires. Anyone who has travelled to the Mediterranean recently will have noted how pine needles pile up beneath pine trees, providing the perfect tinder. Vigilant clearing of forest debris helps to reduce this catastrophe waiting to happen, while more mixed planting of broadleaf trees alongside conifers would make such forests more resilient.

President Trump quite rightly blamed poor forest management for the devastating wildfires in California in recent years. In Australia, mistakes were made by trying to return forests to their pristine, prehistoric state when in fact it was the intervention of humans, especially aboriginal groups, who shaped the forest and now they are encouraging the thinning of woods to reduce the fire risk. Controlled burning has also been used for centuries by native tribes in America and Australia.

Good land management is the key to reducing the risk of wild fires, but as Lord Botham recently argued, this is being stymied in the UK by wrong-headed government policies. Traditional heather moor burns remove old combustible vegetation to create natural fire breaks, but DEFRA has banned this in its nutty drive towards rewilding. Reduced cattle and sheep grazing has also meant that overgrown grass is more likely to catch fire in hot weather.

Massive fires at Saddleworth and Fylingdales can be blamed on winter burns being blocked by Whitehall bureaucrats.

Left-wing commentators can’t wait to point the finger at climate change with the implication that we must simply enact net zero more zealously to eliminate the risk. But it is in fact Green ideology, with no real understanding of the landscape, that is allowing the conditions where wildfires are more likely.

DEFRA were told in 2007 that stopping winter burns would heighten the risk of summer moorland wildfires but they pressed on regardless with their rewilding agenda – and despite warnings also coming from EU and US experts.

The problem is that our environmental government departments and quangos have been captured by Green fanatics who do not listen to the advice of wiser custodians of our land. So hell bent are they on their Green crusade that they don’t realise their mismanagement is destroying the landscape they claim to love.

Lord Botham believes it is also a thinly veiled excuse to clamp down on game shooting and the gamekeepers who maintain it.

The clock is ticking on this issue as the new winter burning season for moors and heaths should be starting on October 1st. If Andy Burnham is truly keen about devolving power to the regions, he should allow regional countryside experts to reverse this ban and ignore the Whitehall Green fanatics who are doing more harm than good.

The path to hell is paved with good intentions, a wise man once said. Likewise, the road to summer infernos can certainly be laid at the feet of simple minded environmentalists who do not understand the reality of land management. Stop the idiocy, stop the fires.