As October arrives, plumes of smoke will start to rise above the moors of northern England. It is heather burning time.
The manicured patchwork of burned squares looks bonny in August as the heather blooms and draws the eye (my son commented on the purple landscape as we drove through the Peak District to join the soggy throng at Hen Harrier Day).
Living hills in the English uplands. Photo Andre Farrar
The burning affects the landscape – the purple hazy is a by-product of a form of land management designed to produce large numbers of red grouse for shooting. But it is becoming unarguable that burning at a landscape scale has other landscape scale impacts ... and not as obvious as turning the hills purple.
An important study published today - The EMBER Project (its full name Effects of Moorland Burning On the Ecohydrology of River Basins) was the result of concerns expressed at the damage such burning is causing to some of our hills. The study was funded by the NERC and supported by Yorkshire Water.
And the study confirms those concern were not misplaced and builds on Natural England’s recent scientific review of the topic.
Impacts on water (more particles released into streams and changes in water chemistry as the water becomes more acidic), changes to the populations of invertebrates in the water; favouring some and harming others in ways that indicate a damaged environment, lowering of the water table making life harder for the bog-forming mosses and more likely carbon will escape into the atmosphere (the last being the stimulus for the headline in this article in the Independent.
A heavy burden to set against purple hills and an over-abundance of red grouse. A heavy burden for an industry to offload the environmental costs onto the public.
These same hills are also largely bereft of hen harriers (the reason I was on my way to Hen Harrier Day) the loss of an iconic species has crystallised concern about the impact of the intensification of land manage to produce as many grouse as possible (and numbers are at record levels), this study widens and deepens the concern around this land-use.
The impact affects us at many levels – to water customers who end up footing part of the bill for dealing with the impact to the catchment (and it’s no coincidence that Yorkshire Water supported this study) – to them it is a local issue. Many of the peatlands affected are amongst our finest wildlife sites – places recognised as being internationally important.
On Monday we watched the new Environment Commissioner (designate) of the European Commission, Karmenu Vella, struggle to answer how he would fight for the environment – he saw no fight between the economy and the environment, he claimed. Well come and visit the hills of England, Mr Vella, and you will see the economics of grouse shooting driving down the condition of sites protected as Special Protection Areas, putting environmental costs onto the public and degrading our natural world - on European protected sites.
So, managed burning has a profound impact on the life support systems of the peatlands in our hills. This supports the need to phase out and stop burning on deep peat soils in the uplands. It should also trigger a concerted effort to agree how to bring these special places back into better condition involving Government, its agencies and landowners.
Follow me on twitter.
Thanks Boris - good point regarding activities justified as being 'traditional'. I recall when burning stubbles in arable areas in the autumn was considered normal until it was banned.
On the question heather management for conservation (as opposed for the production of high numbers of red grouse) management - we favour mowing and where burning is occasionally employed and is never on the deep peat areas.
This appears to be a prime example of new information and science revealing how damaging some forms of 'traditional' management can be. Just because 'we've done it for ages' doesn't mean we should close our eyes to the consequences. The knock on effects of burning on deep peat on our atmosphere and our water make a compelling case for this practice to be stopped. With various political parties over recent week's talking vaguely about improving air and water quality (when they weren't ignoring the environment completely!), here is a first step that they should take.
One thing that struck me reading this blog was, as this is a form of management that is quite widespread, does the RSPB still ever burn on deep peat for conservation reasons?