Wildfire Management Position Statement

Wildfire Management Position Statement – UK National Parks

Wildfires threaten human-made assets like houses, windfarms, fences, heritage features and other built infrastructure, and they also threaten natural assets like woodland, peatlands and less mobile species.

The financial cost of wildfires can be high. Estimates for the cost of the Saddleworth Moor wildfire in 2018 run into many millions of pounds for firefighting and environmental damage. The Moray fires of 2025 were the largest ever recorded in the UK, stretching to over 10,000ha of affected land. Public concern around wildfire has risen in recent years.

The climate in National Parks across the UK has already changed and is continuing to change. These changes are spatially and temporally variable, with the winter months becoming both wetter and warmer, whilst summer months have become hotter with variable consequences for the amount of water available to go into soils and aquatic systems. Spring remains the time of highest fire risk.

Future projections indicate that National Parks will experience further warming over the coming decades, resulting in an increasing number of dry days and number of consecutive dry days during summer months. This will increase the risk of drier soils and vegetation, with consequences for ecological functions and the incidence of wildfire.

Nature recovery objectives, such as increasing the amount of native woodland and natural regeneration; reducing the negative impacts of deer and other herbivores; and increasing species and habitat diversity on moorland will produce many benefits for biodiversity and climate resilience. Large areas of mature woodland and re-wetted areas will likely help create a more fire resilient landscape in the future. However, these habitats can take many years to develop and during the intervening period fuel loads will increase, for example through increased field layer vegetation, as will the corresponding need for fire risk mitigation to minimise losses.

Visitor numbers in National Parks are increasing, which is welcome, but in the context of a warming and drying climate this also raises the risk of wildfires from activities such as campfires, portable barbecues, and discarded cigarettes.

Many National Parks also have controlled burning (muirburn / swaling) carried out within them as part of land management practices and this is also a cause of wildfire when the set fire gets out of control.

The risks and associated measures to prevent wildfires will vary across the National Parks from the wetlands of the Broads to the lowland landscapes of the South Downs or the uplands of the Cairngorms and the Peak District. However, the basic principles remain the same across the National Parks.

Role of National Park Authorities

National Park Authorities provide strategic leadership and develop the statutory management plan for each of the National Parks. In general, they are not directly involved in frontline work to tackle wildfires as this is undertaken by land managers and fire services (although this is a decision for each individual Park Authority).

National Parks Authorities have a role in proactive wildfire mitigation with a strong emphasis on prevention. This can focus on both the role the Authorities have in land management, recreation / access and public communications.

In general, the role of a National Park Authority is to collaborate with key stakeholders around (see Appendix A for more detail):

• Reducing the risk of wildfire;
• Preparing for wildfires that do start; and
• Mitigating impacts of wildfires in the landscape.

Each National Park Authority produces the long-term management plan for their respective areas. This gives each Park Authority an excellent opportunity to set out the approach to wildfire management in their National Park with buy-in from stakeholders.

National Park Authority Commitments

• All National Park Authorities commit to including wildfire management in their National Park Plans as and when they are reviewed. This should include specific wildfire management objectives that drive action across partner organisations.
• All National Park Authorities to lead or help prepare an Integrated Wildfire Management Plan for their National Park as per local circumstance;
• All National Park Authorities have a wildfire lead identified in their staff group;
• Wildfire management where appropriate to be part of coordinated public messaging through the national Communications Unit. The majority of communications on wildfire will be done at a devolved or individual National Park level.
• All National Park Authorities agree to share wildfire management best practice regularly through the UKNP Wildfire Group.

Appendix A

These are the sort of issues that should be considered under these topics by National Park Authorities.

Reducing the Risk of Wildfires

• Wildfire risk assessment
• Role of controlled burning of vegetation (muirburn / swaling)
• Manging for visitors
• Management of recreational fires
• Wildfire danger rating assessment
• Community communications
• Signage and other communications material
• Mapping wildfire incidences and tracking the location and extent of wildfires to identify patterns as basis for prediction and prevention.

Preparing for wildfires that do start

• Estate, farm or land manager fire plans
• Equipment and PPE
• Training
• Fire Groups and mutual aid
• Roles of different organisations at a fire

Mitigating impacts of wildfires in the landscape

• Wildfire resilience
• Fuel loads and nature-based solutions e.g. rewetting
• Fire breaks and woodland planning