School of Sustainability

The helicopters were in England when the Cairngorms caught fire

It took thirty hours for helicopters to reach the fire that burnt through Glenmore and RSPB Abernethy in the Cairngorms this summer, because the aircraft based in Scotland were away fighting blazes in England and Wales. On the ground, more than a hundred volunteers worked beside the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, while bulldozers cut firebreaks and, eventually, water fell from the air. By the time it was out, an area the size of Dundee had burnt.

The year before was worse. A fire at Dava and Carrbridge in 2025 ran across 45 square miles of moorland - roughly the footprint of Manchester - on ground managed for sheep and shooting, not rewilding. Yet while the Cairngorms fire was still burning, attempts were made in the press and on social media to pin it on rewilders. Drained, repeatedly burnt grouse moor dries into a single flammable crop; if the peat beneath ignites, it can smoulder for weeks.

The counter-proposal is blunt: water stops fire. Rewetted peatland, beaver wetlands, native broadleaf woodland and floodplains reconnected to their rivers all hold moisture where it would otherwise drain away; where rewetting is not possible, cattle grazing thins the fuel. Rewetted and naturally grazed ground appears to have escaped the worst of the recent burn - though newly restored land can still catch, which is a case for firebreaks and stewardship, not against the work.

The practical lessons are already visible. The Cairngorms National Park's Climate Adaptation Fund granted £300,000 to fourteen business and community groups this year; twelve of the grants bought firefighting machinery, much of it deployed against the fire within months. A summer byelaw now bans campfires across the park, with signs on every road in. There is talk, too, of a mountain rescue model for wildfire: local people who know the terrain, gamekeepers among them, equipped as the first line.

Trees for Life · Read the source