Wildfire Conference highlights the importance of controlling fuel loads

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2022 England and Wales Wildfire Forum Conference in Belfast 

On the 9^th and 10^th November, Richard Bailey from the NGO Moorland Branch and the NGO’s Northern Development Officer John Clarke attended the England and Wales Wildfire Forum’s two-day conference in Belfast.

This year has seen another huge rise in the number of wildfires. In 2021 there were 237 reported incidents. In 2022, this rose to a staggering 973 and that is only in England and Wales. If it wasn’t obvious before, it is now clear that something needs to be done.

This year’s conference in Belfast was attended by over 200 delegates from all over the world, all of whom had experience of fighting wildfires. The conference was titled ‘The Human Dimension’ and followed on from the 2021 conference held in Cardiff, where the message was about the importance of controlling the fuel load.

In 2022 the focus was on the human cost of wildfires. This covered topics such as how we should all be working together to solve the problem of wildfires; public health issues caused by wildfires; and how people react when a wildfire happens in their neighbourhood. On top of that was the overarching message that: “we must be able to control the fuel load”. Traditional management is far cheaper than any other method of controlling vegetation, and it is vital that we get rid of the hugely dangerous large fuel loads.

Marc Smyth, Group commander for the NI Fire Rescue Service opened the conference. His message was about collective and compassionate leadership. In his opening address he stated that we are seeing bigger and more dangerous wildfire events everywhere and the powers that be needed to listen to and learn from land managers. We have much to lose, he said, so we need to get our heads out of the sand and work together.

Other speakers focussed on the fact that we needed to shift the focus off suppression to the overall prevention of wildfires through managing the fuel load, and creating firebreaks which, alongside natural breaks, can help to create a resilient landscape in the future.

Speakers also addressed public health and the dangers of smoke inhalation; something that we will all need to be aware of in future.

It became very clear from this year’s conference that in England and Wales at least, ‘near misses’ are grossly under-reported. Cathelijne Stoof from Wageningen University presented, ‘Living with fire and the need for diversity’. She began by stating that ‘there is a very common misconception that all fire is bad’. She explained the need for data on wildfires, and why we must count all fires, regardless of how big or small they may be.

As an example of this, Cumbria FRS officer Steve Bray confirmed that in Cumbria alone this year, Park Rangers extinguished 440 barbecues. That figure does not include those extinguished by farmers, gamekeepers and private landowners across the county.  

Unfortunately, there still seems to be real reluctance from the powers that be to grasp the nettle and actually control the fuel load through the use of prescribed burning methods. At the last EWWF conference in Cardiff, one of the delegates commented that despite an obvious need to control the fuel load, he feared that "nothing would change in the UK until someone died in a wildfire". This year, with wildfire numbers on the increase, we came a little bit closer to that situation. We therefore need to see changes to policy in order to help us protect not just precious landscapes, infrastructure, property and wildlife, but also human life.

A hugely poignant part of the two-day conference was a talk by Haf Leyshon from Natural Resources Wales. She gave a talk about partnership approach to integrated wildfire prevention and explained her thoughts and fears about being a small holder/farmer working in an area of south Wales that has been blighted by wildfires.

According to the South Wales Fire Rescue Service, South Wales has experienced 75,000 wildfires in the past 20 years. 96% were started deliberately, with 60% being between the hours of 4pm and midnight. Haf summed her presentation up with this very thought-provoking comment that left the room in silence: “Whoever said that the small things don’t matter has never seen a match start a wildfire.”

As well as being thought-provoking, her final comment highlighted the need for education and a change in policy. It is a very slow process to change policy, but it is one that the NGO will never give up on.