Fire is natural in some ecosystems, but almost all British “wildfires” are started by people. Whether they become catastrophic increasingly depends on the landscapes they burn through. That’s why wildfire policy can’t only focus on preventing ignitions – it must go hand in hand with rebuilding landscapes that resist fire.

Rewilding is often presented as a wildfire problem; when you stop grazing, cutting or burning, vegetation accumulates and there is more fuel for fires.

But this is not the full story. Carefully planned rewilding that focuses on restoring functioning ecosystems can make landscapes wetter, patchier and more fire resistant.

Fire-prone landscapes often look ‘natural’

The purple, treeless moors found across Britain’s uplands can look timeless and wild. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë described “the purple moors” as “a wilderness of heath”. Yet these moors have been shaped by clearance, drainage, grazing, pollution and burning.

Peat records from Keighley Moor in West Yorkshire, not far from Brontë country, reveal a longer story. For most of the past 1,000 years, this landscape would have been much wetter, with abundant peat-forming Sphagnum moss, rather than today’s extensive heather-dominated vegetation created through rotational burning.

Seeing today’s moors as timeless and natural obscures how changes made relatively recently – the past 150 years or so – has made the uplands increasingly fire prone. Data shows........

© The Conversation