Prescribed Burning Canadian Style

We may not have the same scale of problem, but are there lessons we can learn from Canada about the use of fire to prevent large scale wildfires?

"In California, four million hectares burned in 2015, setting records and sparking fire experts to blame overzealous firefighting, arguing the land needs some fire."

"A handful of First Nations groups are working to revive the lost practice of fire-keeping, but it's slow, said Pierre Kruger. We have to re-educate people. None of our families' fires ever got away, but people don't understand fire anymore."

England: Heather Burning

An article in the Shooting Times reports that there is to be a total ban on burning in the Central Pennines, but this is not the case.  See what the Moorland Association has said about this.

The Trust is working with many other organisations to make sure that such a ban is not put in place.  We argue that, while bad burning practices can cause damage, the use of appropriate burning techniques in the right place at the right time is an essential management tool for large areas of the uplands.  We want to see burning carried out in a way that supports the balanced management of the uplands, and the facilities that they provide, including ecosystem services and economic activity.

Through the Uplands Management Group, which provides input to Defra's Upland Stakeholder Forum, we have been supporting the production of guidance about the importance of sphagnum moss for peatland, and carbon capture and storage.  This guidance supports the use of fire as one of the management tools in the uplands.  The Group will publish further guidance soon   that outlines the appropriate management techniques for sphagnum.

In Scotland, I am leading the review of the Muirburn Code for the Scottish Government,and this serves to indicate the government's support for muirburn that is carried out using appropriate techniques.

In my view, heather burning is an essential part of upland management that must continue to be available, but like any powerful tool, burning must be used intelligently with an awareness of the impact it can have on sensitive features. 

Muirburn Code Review

This Muirburn Code Review has been the focus of the Trust's activity in the last 10 days.  We have run two workshops and have one more to do near Huntly, on Tuesday. After this we will reflect on the feedback we have received and will be presenting this at a final workshop on 14th March at Battleby, SNH's conference centre near Perth.

This review started several years ago with a critique of the existing Code and I have been running the review process since January, last year.  Activity is reaching a crescendo, as the aim is to get the text agreed by the end of March so that the Code can be launched over the Summer, perhaps with some promotion activity.  The draft Code is available on its own website (www.muirburncode.org.uk) and this will be 'beautified' when the text has been finalised to include graphics, photographs and perhaps some videos.

In my view, the publication of the Code will mark the start of a process to bring muirburn up to date with the latest knowledge of fire behaviour, improved fire management techniques, coordinating fire science research and possibly the introduction of more formal training and accreditation for practitioners.  This won't take long!

Keep up to date by following the Muirburn Code Review Blog.

Wildfire Conference 2015 - Presentations available

Prevention Better than Cure

November 2015

The presentations from last year's wildfire conference are now available to download.  

The actions and lessons learned during the conference will provide a focus for the work of the wildfire forums, this year, and work will soon need to start to prepare for the next conference, which is likely to be held in 2017.

With the weather set fair this week, there is a good chance for the muirburn, heather burning & swaling plans to be put into action.  Even after all the wet weather of the winter, the vegetation can dry very quickly at this time of year and I urge care so that we do not end up with a spate of wildfires.

The Role of Fire in UK Peatland and Moorland Management

A paper has been produced that reflects on the role of fire in moorland management and it is due for publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, in May.  A copy of the report, which is marked 'For Review Only', has been circulated and to prove that this is an emotive subject,  comments have started to fly.  However, much of the rhetoric is based on the merits, or otherwise, of commenting on a report before it has been published.

One of the authors of the report, is Professor Rob Marrs, the Trust's President.  After discussing the report with him, I have agreed that I will not comment on the report until it has been published by the Royal Society.  At this stage, I will ask Rob to provide his comments on the report and I will add a post to this blog.  I will also aim to include a more in-depth review in the Trust's Annual Report that will be published in early August.

Burning in the Uplands - My Cup is Half-Full

Details of the RSPB-led Study

A new study led by the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science has revealed the extent of moorland burning across Britain’s upland areas. This is the first time upland burning has been mapped in detail across mainland Britain. 

Using aerial photography and satellite images, 45,000 1-km squares were mapped across Scotland, England and Wales, and revealed that burning occurred across 8,551 of these squares, including 5,245 squares in Scotland.  In the ten-year period covered by the study, from 2001 to 2011, the number of fires recorded increased rapidly by 11 per cent each year.

For more information see the RSPB press release.  The paper has been published in Biological Conservation, Volume 191, November 2015, Pages 243–250.  The abstract of the paper can be viewed online and the full paper is available to download for a fee.

Comment

This study is useful as it helps to build a picture of what is going on, but while it has highlighted the problems, it has not addressed possible solutions.  I suspect that this was not part of the research brief, but increasingly I believe that we need to put more effort into joining problems to solutions, if we are going to make progress.

It is relatively easy to use burning to fuel a rant about the state of our peatlands, but we should remember that these areas were, until recently (very recently in the life of peat), regarded as wasteland.  These are slow moving habitats and it will take a long time, under consistent management, to improve their condition.  I would be among the first to agree we need to improve the way we manage burning in many areas, and through this the condition of peatland, but before we discard the management tools, which after all have got us the habitat we all now value highly, we need to think about how the peatland is to be managed, and by whom.

In the short term, my action plan for peatland includes:

• Continuing to raise the profile of peatland - it is an important habitat that needs sensitive management;
• Encouraging the revegetation of bare peat areas to reduce erosion by wind and water;
• Introducing guidelines for traditional peat cutting (for domestic purposes only);
• Agreeing what long-term management is required to improve the condition of the peatland; and
• For highly degraded sites, seek funding for capital works to, for example: 
• reprofile peat hags, 
• block man made ditches and other drainage channels to raise the water table, and
• introduce sphagnum mosses to wet sites, where absent.

Longer-term action will rely on the owners and land managers to make the right decisions for the management of the uplands and the peat stocks they contain. This is an area that needs to be looked at separately.

We should not forget that burning takes place to support: crofting; upland agriculture and commons management; and deer stalking, as well as grouse moor management. Picking on grouse moor managers and then using the detrimental side of burning as a stick to beat them with is potentially self-defeating. Privately funded grouse moor managers are a significant proportion of the upland work force, and if their efforts can be correctly focused, alongside the full range of other managers in the uplands, they should be seen as part of the solution, not the problem. We need the support of these people to deliver the objectives we seek.

Also outside the scope of the study are the considerable changes that are already taking place in the uplands. As demonstrated by our Golden Plover Award, and the take up of support from the Peatland Action project in Scotland, landowners and managers are beginning to embrace the 'love your peatlands' message. We still have a way to go with this, but momentum is building.

During the 'bogathon’ visits, in Northern England last year, which the RSPB were part of, we agreed that burning should remain as one of the management tools, but it needs to be applied intelligently, not by rote.  We need to adjust burning techniques and rotations to suit the requirements of the land, including peatland, and this may mean less, or even no, burning in some areas.  This might save grouse moor managers some work!  

Also, the alternative of cutting heather, should not be ignored.  Cutting cannot be used everywhere, but the Trust's recent studies have recorded that some grouse moor managers are getting excellent results through cutting alone.  See our Members' Briefing on Heather Management in the Reading Room on the Trust's website.

I believe that the picture is for from being as gloomy as the study would have us believe.  The winds of change have started to blow, and with encouragement I believe that momentum is building behind improving our management of burning and the condition of our peatland.  My cup is half-full!

Members’ Briefing - Heather Management

I have been aware of a shift in the balance between heather management by burning and cutting in recent years, and I believe that the amount of management taking place by cutting is increasing. On some moors managers have gone the whole hog and have started to manage their heather by cutting only. The decision not to burn may have been taken for a range of reasons, such as water catchment restrictions, concerns about damage to peatland, lack of manpower or even personal preference.

As a result of this change, I thought it was more than appropriate that we carried out a review of some of the developments in thinking from a Heather Trust standpoint. Patrick Laurie has been working on this for two years and has been to visit many areas where this new thinking is developing. He has collected a large amount of information and we have decided to start publishing this.

The first step is a Members’ Briefing, which is now available from the Reading Room on the HT website. Although it is called a Members’ Briefing, we make this available to everyone and hope that anyone who is not already a member will take the appropriate action if they value the information this briefing contains.

There is much more to be done on this subject and Patrick and I will be working on this.  We will publish more information from time to time.

It is clear that many people feel passionate about their heather management, and we accept that our briefing may challenge some sensitivities. However, before anyone accuses us of going over to the dark side, you should note that we start the Members Briefing with a statement in support of heather burning, but we are keen to explore all the ways to manage heather to make sure that we use the available tools, to the best advantage.

If you agree, or disagree, with our thinking, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please use the comment box below.

Northern Ireland: Heather Burning & Bracken Control II

Good to see that the interest in bracken control and prescribed burning in Northern Ireland that was in evidence in the meeting last month was repeated at a second event. See the report in Farming Life.

The active involvement of the NI Fire & Rescue Service in these discussions is encouraging. Prescribed burning should be seen as a way to reduce the risk of damage from wildfire and therefore reducing the NIFRS' exposure to wildfire.

I am pleased to have been invited to help with a wildfire event in Northern Ireland, next month, and I look forward to working with NIFRS. I will put more details on the Blog, in due course.

Northern Ireland: Heather Burning & Bracken Control

The DAB Farmers Group and the Ulster Farmers Union organised a meeting to discuss heather burning and bracken control, both key topics for hill farmers, with speakers from NI Fire Service and the NI Environment Agency.  The NIEA commented on the bracken control trails, a comparison of the effectiveness of different control techniques, that I visited last November.

The good turnout for a meeting to discuss these two issues, which are at the core of the Trust's work, is encouraging.  I hope to be invited back to NI, this year, to provide some input that will draw on our experience of working elsewhere.

See the full report in Farming Life.

Monday: England - Best Practice Burning Group

I was chairman for the 38th meeting of this Group, yesterday, but we could possibly be nearing the end of this long run.  I was a founder member of the Group way back in 2003, when we were all a lot younger.  One of the highlights of the Group's work was the success of the advice provided to Defra about the review of the Heather & Grass Burning Code, and the regulations behind it, that was launched in 2007.  The Group has made a lot of progress, but maybe it is time for a change.

A suggestion was discussed for the Group to reform as an Uplands Best Practice Group that will provide practitioner input to Defra's Upland Stakeholder Forum, which is now gathering momentum. In the new guise the Group would be better able to provide practitioner input to debates beyond burning, and it was noticeable yesterday that much of the discussion was about peatland management, springing from the Outcomes discussions focussed on the 'Bog-athon' process. See the previous post.  If this change goes ahead, the Group is likely to establish small task groups to address specific topics and these could include issues around burning.

The Uplands Alliance is also in the development stage and it appears that its work will focus principally on research and policy issues.  Some clear thinking will be required to make sure that all the groups work together efficiently and effectively so that we avoid any hint of duplication and serve the best interests of the uplands.

For Peat's Sake RSPB - join the party

It will not have escaped the attention of anyone, with an interest in the uplands and access to the Internet, that there have been some acrimonious public exchanges in the last couple of weeks.  The debate has been hotting up around moorland management and raptor persecution. Due to my preference to present positive management issues, this is not an area that the Heather Trust strays into very often, but on this occasion I have been drawn to comment.

For those who want to follow the debate the exchanges are available on the websites - see the RSPB letter, and the Moorland Association reply.

My view of this sort of exchange is that achieves very little apart from a deepening of the trenches from which the bricks are launched, and the birds that the RSPB seeks to protect are the most likely losers from this continuing trench warfare. I do not deny that the land management community needs to get its house in order, but an approach that risks the alienation of every landowner, land manager, gamekeeper and farmer cannot be the best way of making progress. Management may not be perfect, but the owners and managers of land are the only people who can make a difference. We need to encourage a spirit of cooperation, not alienation, and work together.  With a bit of compromise, there is the potential to deliver lasting benefits for all interest groups.

The bog-athon visits described in the previous post illustrate what can be achieved from a little consensus building. This approach may not increase membership numbers or produce column inches in the same way, but in my view it is much more likely to produce lasting benefits for the upland areas and species that we all work to protect and enhance. The bog-athon has started a process, which has the RSPB at its core, that is capable of delivering real progress.

High Peak - damaged peatland

It is extremely confusing and frustrating that on return from a positive meeting of the burning group, I was met by another missive from the RSPB that seeks to ban burning in the Peak District ‘For Peat’s Sake Stop the Burn’.  This promotes a very different and negative message to that coming out of the bog-athon process.  There is a challenge in the Peak District to repair the damage of the past, but we will achieve little by heated exchange.

Perhaps the RSPB needs to get its house in order and decide what it really wants to achieve.  Then the organisation needs to be realistic about how best to do this.  I would be delighted to to support them where our interests overlap (which would be in many places) but the mixed messages coming out of the organisation at the moment make this difficult, or even impossible.

Come on RSPB - it is time to get off your high horse and join the party.  A united moorland management industry could achieve great things.

Burning on Deep Peat

The Bog-athon in progress

Holiday and a lot of activity have resulted in this blog being quiet for a while.  However, this does not mean that I have not been busy.

One of the main topics that has attracted a lot of activity in England in recent weeks has been burning on deep peat.  As the current chairman of the Best Practice Burning Group, I presided over the 37th meeting of this Group on Monday, this week.  Many are bemused by how could we find enough to talk about to fill 37 meetings, but I can assure that we have done.  Along with others, I have been there from the start, and I can assure you that there has never been any shortage of discussion.

The latest flurry of activity has been spurred on by the Evidence to Advice phase of Natural England’s Upland Evidence Review.  I commented in an earlier post about how this process had lost its way and that an unfortunate amount of heat had entered discussions.  As a way to defuse this, and to allow NE to make progress, what has become known as the bog-athon was set up.  A working group from the main Burning Group visited 3 areas of deep peat in Northern England on successive days. This was pretty intensive, not helped by staying in the same pub on the nights in between, with the inevitable consequences.  However, the intensity allowed us to drill down into areas of discussion that had eluded us at other times.

I was joined on the working group by representatives from Natural England, RSPB, Moorland Association, Yorkshire Water and a landowner / farmer. In addition, the gamekeepers, landowners and NE Area Staff with an interest in the moor joined each visit to provide local input.  The visits took place on Raby Estate, Upper Teesdale; Keighley Moor, Yorkshire; and the High Peak in the Peak District.  These moors represented a good range of habitats and management objectives that allowed the working group to start to develop an approach that would work to deliver multiple objectives, if applied to other peatland.

The Burning Group meeting allowed the working group to present the thinking to other members of the Group.  The diverse membership makes it impossible to develop proposals for guidance, but  there will be a delay before the Group can issue any statement about what we are proposing, as member organisations need to review the proposals first.

Until there is an agreed position from the Group I cannot provide details of what is proposed but let me provide a flavour:

• I have been heartened by the way that a good deal of consensus has developed as a result of the bog-athon visits.
• There is no intention to ban burning on deep peat; it will continue to be available as an important tool.
• There is a need to adapt the way that burning on deep peat is approached; more sensitive use of fire can be beneficial to all interests.
• More sphagnum moss should be encouraged.
• Landowners and managers have the ability to innovate and produce the desired outcomes. 
• Further discussion needs to look forward; chewing over old bones will not be productive.

It is likely to be into the autumn before there is any formal output from the Group, and I am keen that there is a joint communiqué that expresses the view of the Burning Group, rather than rely on separate announcements made by individual organisations.

This is all a big improvement from the loggerheads position we have ended up in at the end of some of the 36 previous meetings.  The problems have not gone away but we have made considerable progress.

Burning for grouse alters upland stream ecology

This is a report on recently published research by the University of Leeds.  The title is rather more emotive than the report, and it is encouraging to note the reference to the need to take economic factors into account.

Although there are obvious concerns about the impact of burning on peatland and the downstream effects on water quality, I am more concerned about the impact of bad burning practices and wildfire.  I believe that use of best practice burning techniques by skilled moorland managers will produce the best results for grouse, heather, peatland, water and other ecosystems.

Heather management: burning and cutting

Richard May on cut heather (Patrick Laurie)

The merits of burning and/or cutting heather have been debated in bars, houses and on moors since the management of moorland began.  Cutting is perhaps the new kid on the block, as fire has been managing heather since time began and as a result, heather is described as a fire-adapted plant.

At the Heather Trust, we have revived interest in this debate, as we have been made aware of the work that Richard May, a member of the Board, has been doing in the Peak District.  It was time to investigate further, and Patrick Laurie set off last week with this as an objective, in addition to catching up with the work that has been taking place on the moors that are contributing to the restoration trial after heather beetle.  Patrick has set out his thoughts from his visit on his own Blog.

Starting with Patrick's thoughts, I have started to list out the issues we could consider as part of this review and it has quickly become extensive.  There will be more issues, but these are the first ideas:

• Does burning aid regeneration of heather from seed - the smoke is thought to condition the seed to increase the rate of germination?
• Cutting does not work where the ground is unsuitable - too steep, on broken / rocky ground, where there is no access, or where the ground is too wet.
• Cutting can achieve a fine mosaic that would be difficult to replicate by burning.
• What are the impacts of a fine mosaic on grouse and other species?
• What are the merits of cutting and leaving the brash, against cutting and removing?
• What is the effect of age of heather on the relevant merits of the different techniques?
• How is the impact on the landscape assessed?
• The impact of burning on water quality, especially on peat soils, has been extensively researched, but is there an impact from cutting?
• The relative costs should be considered - burning requires a team of people, while cutting can be carried out by one person and one machine - "burn heather or burn diesel".
• Cutting does not carry a risk of wildfire.
• How can cutting can be best used in support of burning?
• How do we cater for the fact that 'every moor is different'?

I plan to work up these ideas into an article, or even a series of articles, that we will publish in our Annual Report.  To make this work as well-informed as possible, I hope to harness some other sources of information that include Professor Rob Marrs, our President; Richard May for input from his work in the Peak District; and possibly other organisations such as GWCT and British Moorlands.

Dick Bartlett of British moorlands is a member of the Trust and is based near Aberlour in Morayshire.  During the Cairngorms Land Management Forum meeting, last week (see separate post) he was expounding an approach to moorland management for grouse that  involved cutting a network of narrow strips through heather.  This could provide some useful input to our review.

Wildfire risk high in NW Scotland

Photo: Greg Little

Many areas are still struggling to recover from snow drifts but according to a BBC report, north-west Scotland escaped the snow and the dry conditions have resulted in a spate of wildfires.

The main muirburn season extends until 15 April, but anyone planning muirburn in NW Scotland is advised to exercise great caution.  Conditions may be too dry and it would be difficult or impossible to control a fire after it has started.

Muirburn training in Lanarkshire - 15 March 2013

England: The Best Practice Burning Group

Burning not required!

When I drafted this post, I was passing over the top of the Pennines on the Settle – Carlisle railway returning from the 31st meeting of the Burning Group in Leeds.  a good place to reflect on the progress of the Group.  It is slightly daunting that the Trust has been a member of this Group since it was formed and some would argue that by the 31st meeting we should have sorted out everything to do with burning and more besides.  I wish!  

This Group is not alone in making slow progress.  Avid readers of this blog may remember that I commented on Professor Charles Gimingham’s file he gave me that covered the meetings of a Muirburn Group in Scotland in the late 1950s; the agenda for one of those meetings would not look out of place today.

The meeting on Friday covered a range of issues that are spinning off from Natural England’s activities and also the relatively new ‘kid on the block’, the Upland Stakeholder Forum (USF).  The key issues for Natural England are the Upland Evidence Review, which I will give separate mention to in the future, and proposed changes to the consenting for ‘minor works’ on upland SSSIs.  The consenting proposals were presented to the USF, earlier in the week.  I am part of the USF but missed the meeting as a result of a fatality on the west coast line that caused railway disorder.

One issue that has defied the efforts of the Burning Group to resolve is how you define blanket bog, or should it be blanket mire?  With people referring to different things it is no wonder that it can sometimes be difficult to reach agreement.  Discussion of this topic can quickly become nurdy but in summary:

• There is no difficulty with blanket mire – deep peat, very wet and bog vegetation.
•  Similarly, dry heath causes no problem - shallower peat / mineral soil, dry ground and dominated by dwarf shrub heath (heather, blaeberry etc.).
• The fun starts with the stuff in the middle.  How do you classify:
• dry heath plants on deep peat, or
• wet ground that grows a good crop of heather.

As ever the problem is to come up with a one-size-fits-all definition for something that changes by the yard.  Once the definition is decided, there is a further problem in defining how best to manage the land to meet a variety of objectives.  Perhaps the only way to achieve this would be to break the definitions into different classes by the management they require.  Once again the extremes are easy to deal with: very wet blanket mire, requires little if any management; dry heath benefits from an appropriate grazing & burning regime. 

The stuff in the middle on deep peat could be split into three: land which could be restored easily to active blanket mire; land that could be restored with difficulty; and no chance land, which cannot be restored.

However defining land in this way introduces a whole heap of other issues to consider and a requirement for yet more definitions.  We may never get to a series of completely black and white definitions and indeed getting there may not be the answer.  The effort of engaging in dialogue maybe enough to confirm that watertight definitions cannot exist for a habitat that is infinitely changeable.  The Burning Group will keep chipping away at this and will hopefully make progress in the next 31 meetings. 

National campaign against moorland bog-burning

Environmental campaigners to set up Ban the Burn in response to the support now being given to Walshaw Moor following the collapse of the public inquiry.  See the The Northerner Blog post in The Guardian article for more information.

The tenuous link is made between grouse shooting, burning and flooding and this appears to be at the root of the campaign.  I have every sympathy with the residents of Hebden Bridge who have been flooded out, but I do not think that grouse shooting is the problem.  The analogy of the uplands being a sponge is now seen as old hat: when the uplands are saturated with water, as happens in summers like this one, they will behave like saturated sponges and water will run off them. Fast.  

What we need is carefully balanced management of our upland areas and yes that takes money and the biggest source of this in many parts of our uplands is grouse shooting.  Grouse moor owners and their employees are the most experienced people for moorland management.

Some people may not like the concept of grouse shooting, but maybe the residents of Hebden Bridge, and in other similar places, would be better advised to tolerate this, if not actively support it, in the interests of getting the moorland that surrounds their homes properly managed and therefore better able to reduce the risk of downstream flooding.  Unmanaged moorland is an accident waiting to happen - wildfires and flooding being two of the biggest risks.