80% Destroyed, Five Years to Recover: What One Wildfire Took From the Moors

Photo by Scott Wicking

Quick summary

• Fylingdales lost 80% of its managed moorland to wildfire in 2025; recovery: five-plus years.

• Peatland wildfires caused about 90% of UK fire-related carbon, 2001–2021, peer-reviewed analysis finds.

• A single 2020 fire killed "thousands of animals, including red-listed species," on one estate.

• Zero of 15 burning licences approved since 2025, while Natural England's own rewetting review failed too.

In the summer of 2025, a wildfire crossed 25 square kilometres of the North York Moors, burned into the peat beneath, and kept smouldering there for weeks after the surface fire was contained.

On Fylingdales Moor, part of the same fire complex, 80% of the managed moorland landscape was lost. Recovery, the site's own stewardship scheme told Parliament’s recent inquiry into wildfire, will take "at least five years" before the ground can even support grazing again.

That is what fire does to land that took centuries to form. It is also, more simply, what it does to what lives on that land. In May 2020, a portable barbecue started a fire on the Lords Hall Estate in Darwen that burned 630 acres in an afternoon.

The estate's owner told the inquiry it "killed thousands of animals including red listed bird species, curlew, short eared owl etc".

The carbon that does not come back

Beneath the heather is the slower casualty: peat that has stored carbon for centuries.

Peer-reviewed analysis by Baker et al. (2025), cited in evidence from the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), found that peatland wildfires caused around 90% of the UK's total fire-related carbon emissions between 2001 and 2021.

At Langdale/Fylingdales, an estimated 42,000 tonnes of carbon were consumed as the fire burned into the peat for weeks: the most severe wildfire recorded in the UK by carbon released.

Two further fires show the same pattern, though measured in a different unit (carbon dioxide, not elemental carbon, so not directly comparable to the Langdale figure): the 2018 Saddleworth Moor fire released an estimated 40,000 tonnes of CO2, and a 2019 wildfire across 22 square miles of Scotland's Flow Country, the world's largest blanket bog, released an estimated 700,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, doubling Scotland's national emissions for the six days it burned.

Whatever the unit, this is carbon that does not return on a timescale policy can afford to ignore.

What lives, and what doesn't

The species picture is not simply "fire is bad, so leave the land alone." The Countryside Alliance's submission argues that on moorland managed through rotational burning, curlew and lapwing, both red-listed species, are "3.5 times more likely to raise chicks successfully," with golden plover and redshank reaching densities "up to five times greater than on unmanaged moorland").

Testimony to the inquiry describes the build-up of vegetation that are making wildfires not only more likely, but also more severe.

A Peak District head gamekeeper put it plainly: "every estate in the Peak District has double the amount of heather now compared to 15 years ago… there are no natural fire breaks any more".

A North York Moors resident who watched Fylingdales burn named the underlying cause: "If fires are to be prevented we must conserve moorland not preserve it. Management is essential to all species and to prevent such despicable destruction that may now never recover".

Why the damage keeps repeating

Two facts from this inquiry explain why this keeps happening. First, Natural England commissioned its own review of three of its reserves (Dovestones, Marsden and Hatfield Moss), all managed through rewetting and restoration rather than burning.

Its report, NECR484, found that "nature-based solutions at Dovestones, Marsden, Hatfield Moss NNR and the Flow Country did not prevent or control the fires").

If restoration alone could stop this kind of ecological loss, these are the sites where it should have.

Second, the tool with the stronger evidence behind it is currently unavailable. Grazing, cutting and prescribed burning combined are estimated to cut wildfire severity by 60–70%, and a separate submission cites a multi-site UK study finding managed, cool burning cuts severity "by over 70% in treated areas".

Yet by February 2026, none of the fifteen licence applications to burn deep peat under England's tightened 2025 rules had been approved, a figure confirmed at a parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee session).

The tool that reduces this ecological damage is blocked. The alternative meant to replace it has not, on Natural England's own evidence, prevented it.

The timescale that matters

Fylingdales will not carry sheep again before 2031. The peat it lost took centuries to form and will not reform in anyone's working lifetime.

That is the timescale this Committee is legislating on — one that dwarfs a licensing review or the news cycle around one bad summer.

The evidence says the tool that could reduce this damage is being held back while the tool meant to replace it has yet to prove, on the Government's own reserves, that it can stop a fire at all.

Since the inquiry took place, the chairman of the EFRA Committee Alistair Carmichael has written to Defra, asking how it is addressing concerns about managed burning licences and the evidence base behind the 2025 burning regulations.

We look forward to reading the response.