Tracking burning in the UK's precious uplands

Burning on deep peat  (c) RSPB Images Tom Aspinall

A new study by Mike Shewring and scientists from the RSPB published in the journal Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, has mapped the annual extent of moorland burning across the uplands of Great Britain, and the overlap with sensitive features including peatland and protected sites. Here, Pat Thompson, RSPB Senior Land use Policy Officer highlights some of our concerns with burning and describes what this study means for land use policy in England.

The RSPB has a long-standing interest in the burning of moorland habitats in the UK uplands. The sight and smell of moorland burning is a characteristic feature of those parts of upland Britain, where large tracts of moorland have been managed for grouse shooting (since Victorian times) when recreational driven grouse shooting became fashionable. Gamekeepers burn moorland vegetation on rotation, seeking to create a patchwork of heather of different age and structure, to help boost grouse numbers for shooting. Red grouse prefer to feed on young nutritious heather shoots and to nest and hide from predators in longer, older heather.

In some areas, a combination of drainage (largely historic), grazing and burning (over many years), has dried out the underlying peat and had a negative impact on peatland processes and habitats, with characteristic peat-forming vegetation sometimes lost and replaced by dwarf shrubs, especially heather. Though some argue to the contrary, numerous sources of evidence highlight the negative impacts of burning, especially on globally important peatland habitats (blanket bog) and sites. In response to the growing awareness of the impacts of burning, the Scottish Government has now passed new legislation (The Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill) to regulate vegetation burning (muirburn) on peat. In England, new legislation came into force in May 2021 with the publication of The Heather and Grass etc Burning (England) Regulations.

In contrast to previous RSPB work to map burning, Mike and colleagues developed a novel semi-automated method to map the detection of new burn scars in moorland vegetation (each year), using high resolution satellite images. This enables a more rapid assessment of the incidence and extent of burning occurring (per annum) across whole landscapes and the extent to which burning overlaps with fire-sensitive features (e.g. peat soils, protected areas, steep ground and alpine habitats). Using this new approach, the authors mapped burning in Great Britain over five years (2017/18 to 2021/22). Over this time, an average of 15,250 ha of vegetation was burnt each year (59% of which was in Scotland and 39% in England). In England, the area mapped as burned during 2021/22 fell to 1,859 ha, a decline of 73% when compared with the average of the four previous burning seasons - a pattern not repeated for Scotland, although over 40% of the burning that did still take place in England was on deep peat.

Blanket Bog (c) RSPB Images Tim Melling

The RSPB wants to see the burning of globally important blanket bog halted and has been monitoring burning in England and Scotland over several years, with members of the public reporting ‘moorland’ burning via a custom-made phone app. Records received are validated and cross-referenced with maps of peat depth and designated sites. Using this information we have built up a picture of where we believe illegal burning may be occurring. For example, during 2021/22 and 2022/23, one third (32%) of burns reported to the RSPB in England were believed to be on peat >40 cm deep, with 28% to 29% of all fires reported identified as being both on deep peat and within Sites of Special Scientific Interest and sites of European importance (Special Areas of Conservation and Special Protection Areas). Burns identified as being potentially illegal are sent to Defra Investigations and Natural England for further action.

The overall reduction in burning in England during 2021/22 is welcome and may indeed be a response to the new regulations which have been hard won. In England, the new regulations are the product of years of work, largely by the RSPB, culminating in the European Commission threatening to take the UK Government to court in 2017 (due to reported breaches of the Habitats and Birds Directives) and the UK Government’s failure to get sufficient grouse shooting estates to voluntarily relinquish their consents (permissions) to burn blanket bog within designated sites.

The recorded incidence of burning on deep peat in England is still much too high. England’s upland peatlands are in a poor state with less than 13% remaining in a near natural state. It is imperative that we take all necessary steps to halt damaging practices (such as burning) and restore our upland peatlands by blocking drains and gullies, revegetating bare peat, and where necessary, kick-starting peat formation by introducing peat-forming Sphagnum mosses back onto the bog surface. Such actions, already underway in some places, will slow the flow of water downstream, greatly increase resilience to drought and fire and will benefit peatland wildlife and wider society.

With new legislation now in place to oversee the regulation of burning in both England and Scotland, it is exciting to note that we now have a robust, easy-to-deploy method to monitor where burning occurs – thus providing a means of holding landowners and managers to account. Hopefully the future for our blanket bogs just got a little brighter!