But this is not the full story. Carefully planned rewilding that focuses on restoring functioning ecosystems can make landscapes wetter, patchier and more fire\u00a0resistant.<\/p>\n
Solutions every Saturday The purple, treeless moors found across Britain\u2019s uplands can look timeless and wild. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront\u00eb described \u201cthe purple moors\u201d as \u201ca wilderness of heath\u201d. Yet these moors have been shaped by clearance, drainage, grazing, pollution and burning.<\/p>\n Peat records\u00a0from Keighley Moor\u00a0in West Yorkshire, not far from Bront\u00eb country, reveal a longer story. For most of the past 1,000 years, this landscape would have been much wetter, with abundant peat-forming\u00a0Sphagnum\u00a0moss, rather than today\u2019s extensive heather-dominated vegetation created through rotational burning.<\/p>\n Seeing today\u2019s moors as timeless and natural obscures how changes made relatively recently \u2013 the past 150 years or so \u2013 has made the uplands increasingly fire prone.\u00a0Data shows<\/a>\u00a0that nearly 80% of England\u2019s peatlands are dry and degraded, while just 1% are dominated by water-retaining species such as\u00a0Sphagnum\u00a0mosses. Dry heather, for instance, can act as a\u00a0fuse, carrying fire across the surface and, if peat soils are exceptionally dry, into the carbon-rich\u00a0peat below.<\/p>\n \n Heather on the hills at Swaledale, Yorkshire Dales, UK. Image: Duncan A Brown\n <\/p>\n How to rebuild nature\u2019s fire defences<\/p>\n Rewilding is not land abandonment; it requires carefully considered action to restore\u00a0natural processes and functions. We must learn from the complex habitat mosaics that once characterised Britain\u2019s uplands, while preparing them for a climate with\u00a0no historical equivalent.<\/p>\n The task is to manage short-term transition risks while allowing ecosystems to reorganise into functional, climate-resilient states. Here are a few suggestions:<\/p>\n 1. Bring back the bog<\/p>\n This starts by making fire-prone landscapes much wetter. Blocking drains, covering bare peat and restoring\u00a0Sphagnum\u00a0keeps water in the ground and reduces\u00a0deep peat combustion. After a wildfire in Scotland in 2019, analysis showed\u00a0degraded peat burned most severely, while vegetation in restored, wetter peatlands was\u00a0far more resilient<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, research across Canada and northern Europe\u00a0shows that rewetting and moss restoration can reduce the risk of deep, carbon-rich peat catching fire. But, choosing the right species for the right places under future climates is\u00a0critical, and we\u2019ll have to accept that fire-resilient uplands may look very different from those we know today.<\/p>\n \n Bog pools across Thursley Common in Surrey, UK. Image: Alex Manders\n <\/p>\n 2. Restore wet riverscapes and ponds<\/p>\n Upland headwaters and valleys have been drained and straightened, speeding water out of these landscapes. Emerging science suggests that re-meandering streams, reconnecting floodplains and recovering wetlands can act as\u00a0firebreaks<\/a>. During dry weather, wetter and more varied river corridors could interrupt continuous fuels and provide refuges for wildlife.<\/p>\n In the North York Moors, six beaver dams\u00a0increased water storage and dry-weather flows. Beaver-dammed rivers also burned less severely\u00a0during three North American megafires. Ponds could also add another layer of defence, as open water can\u00a0reduce the spread of fires, while accessible ponds provide water for wetting firebreaks and suppressing spot fires.<\/p>\n 3. Bring back missing giants<\/p>\n Cattle, horses, deer and bison create patchier vegetation by grazing, browsing and trampling in different ways. Instead of continuous areas of flammable vegetation, they produce a landscape with natural breaks that\u00a0slow the spread of fire.<\/p>\n But the diverse communities of large herbivores that once shaped Britain\u2019s uplands have been replaced by managed livestock \u2013 mostly sheep \u2013 often at high densities. This creates even-aged vegetation that can become dense and fire-prone when the animals aren\u2019t grazing.<\/p>\n In Portugal\u2019s\u00a0C\u00f4a Valley, semi-wild horse grazing has become a rewilding strategy to counter the impacts of land abandonment. This is consistent with a wider\u00a0systematic review<\/a>\u00a0which found that herbivores reduce fuel effectively when grazers and browsers complement one another.<\/p>\n \n Deer in Richmond Park, UK. Image: Marek Mucha\n <\/p>\n 4. Recover broadleaf woodland<\/p>\n Evidence from more than\u00a026,000 wildfires\u00a0in Spain shows broadleaf woodland had the lowest ignition risk, while pine and shrublands were among the most fire-prone habitats. Even under extreme fire weather modelling, broadleaf woodland reduced fire intensity\u00a0fivefold.<\/p>\n Yet Britain has lost the vast majority of its native woodlands. Today, only\u00a014%\u00a0of the UK is wooded, and\u00a0about half\u00a0of that is coniferous woodland \u2013 mostly in managed plantations.<\/p>\n The ecologist Oliver Rackham\u00a0wrote that<\/a>\u00a0\u201cEnglish native woods burn like wet asbestos\u201d \u2013 that is, hardly at all. It\u2019s time these woods were restored to the parts of the British uplands they once covered.<\/p>\n 5. Rewild with people<\/p>\n Our research<\/a>\u00a0shows rewilding must include support from communities learning to coexist with more unpredictable landscapes. In the short term, prevention, intensified monitoring, early detection and professional response must manage the risks of transition. Better warnings, rapid reporting and early detection can make visitors and residents part of the defence.<\/p>\n Britain won\u2019t prevent every wildfire, but it can do something about the sorts of landscapes those fires burn through. Climate-smart rewilding should be treated as national resilience infrastructure: restoring bogs, rivers, woodlands and wild animals, so fires are less likely to become landscape-scale disasters.<\/p>\n Joe Glentworth is a lecturer in nature recovery \u00a0and rewilding at the University of Manchester. Anna Gilchrist is a senior lecturer in environmental management and ecology at the University of Manchester. Ian Thornhill is a senior lecturer in planning and environmental management at the University of Manchester.<\/p>\n This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the\u00a0original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n Main image: Kylli Kittus<\/p>\n Be part of the solution<\/p>\n At Positive News, we\u2019re not chasing clicks or profits for media moguls \u2013 we\u2019re here to serve you and have a positive social impact. We can\u2019t do this unless enough people like you choose to support our journalism.<\/p>\n Give once from just \u00a31, or join 1,800+ others who contribute an average of \u00a33 or more per month. Together, we can build a healthier form of media \u2013 one that focuses on solutions, progress and possibilities, and empowers people to create positive change.<\/p>\n
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