Scotland is about to smother muirburn in red tape despite growing wildfire danger – Alistair Carmichael
People who work the land and live with the risk of wildfires are often the first responders when they start. Why is the Scottish Government tying their hands?
A little over 100 miles from where I write this column, wildfires are threatening the city boundaries of Bordeaux. To the south, the Spanish are combating a similar crisis. Elsewhere, there is havoc in the Cairngorms. Upland communities in parts of England and Wales were recently in the same position, and now Suffolk has been hit.
Wildfires are not a new phenomenon, but the frequency, scale and intensity of what we are seeing is of a different order. The climate crisis is tightening its grip – and the cost of these events, in both environmental and economic terms, is colossal.
More difficult to quantify is the human cost – not just the risk to life and limb but the mental impact that living with the risk and reality of wildfires has on the people in these communities.
Tightly controlled and licenced
Slowly but surely, farmers, crofters, gamekeepers, land managers and their families are finding their voice. Theirs is a frustration born from being marginalised as they have warned of the dangers that we are facing because of the way in which we manage (or fail to manage) these precious natural assets.
They have watched as numbers of livestock grazing the hills have been reduced. They have watched as traditional methods of moorland management have been regulated almost out of existence. The practice of controlled ‘cool burning’, or muirburn, in late winter and early spring, which takes the fuel load (the dry tinder which drives these fires) off the hills has been made ever-more difficult. As of next year in Scotland, it will be a tightly controlled and licenced activity.
The Commons’ Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee is currently undertaking an inquiry into wildfires. Our call for evidence produced a remarkable response. Of course, all the usual suspects were there: farming unions, conservation organisations and the like. The remarkable thing, however, was that 70 per cent of the submissions came not from some carefully organised ‘clicktivist’ campaign, but from private individuals.
Time to listen to rural communities
These were the people who make their living working the land and their families, sharing their experiences. A lot of it was difficult reading, as they explained in their own words the reality of living with the risk of wildfires on their doorstep.
They are usually the first responders when wildfires start. It’s a lot to ask of anyone to put yourself in harm’s way to prevent something that you warned would happen when it inevitably does. To expect them to keep fighting these fires as the problem only gets worse is fundamentally unsustainable. Something has to give.
As the climate crisis accelerates, we need every tool in the toolbox to tackle its causes and its symptoms – prevention, adaptation and mitigation. There is a lot that we can and should do with the likes of peatland restoration, environmental recovery and re-wetting. However, if we prioritise these methods above all others, such as grazing management and controlled burning, we risk making matters worse for both the environment and rural communities.
Governments know this, or at least they should. Rural communities – in Scotland as much as anywhere else in Europe – have been telling them for long enough. It is high time that they were listened to.
Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.