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How Happy Is the Prime Minister With Natural England? Our Letter to Mary Creagh MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Nature

Wildfire

We've recently been exchanging letters with Mary Creagh MP, who is the current Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Nature. You can read our latest letter below or download a copy here. The letter emphasizes our concerns regarding the deterioration of the relationship between the countryside and Natural England.


Dear Minister,


How happy is the Prime Minister with Natural England?


This is a reply to your letter of the 13 February in which you responded to our letter to the Home Secretary of the 20 January.


I look forward to the meeting you suggested. Pragmatic discussion is key to stopping rural vs urban disputes becoming a dialogue of the deaf.


Ahead of that meeting, this letter explains our concerns. Simply put, the relationship between the countryside and Natural England is dysfunctional. Your skills as a marriage counsellor are needed.


Natural England has already faced fierce criticism. Not least after the Prime Minister singled out the ‘bat tunnel’ as emblematic of wasteful public expenditure. The agency blamed HS2 for that.


However, there are other matters which will fuel concern in Downing Street.


Natural England vs the G7, the White House and the EU


I start with an issue which last month worried the G7 leaders. It is the prospect of wildfires spilling into cities as occurred in Los Angeles. Even before that disaster, the National Fire Chiefs Council warned that UK wildfires were starting to cross the “rural urban interface”.


In their statement on wildfires, the G7 leaders called for the use of “controlled burning” as a means of preventing them “endangering lives, affecting human health, destroying homes and ecosystems, and costing governments and taxpayers billions of dollars”.


The previous week saw President Trump issue an executive order to reduce restrictions on

“prescribed fires”. The White House called this “commonsense wildfire prevention”.[4]

The European Commission also believes vegetation management is critical to reducing dangerous fuel loads.


Yet Natural England knows better. It has dramatically reduced both preventative burning and mowing. The resulting build-up of vegetation has been further exacerbated by Natural England reducing sheep and cattle numbers by around a quarter. Less grazing means more fuel load.


Without fuel there are no fires. With massive increases in vegetation, you get what we have - the worst wildfires in our history. It is as if a petrol station had been built on every hill.

 

The National Fire Chiefs Council is concerned that the Government approach to wildfires is disjointed. On one side, your department prophetically warned in 2023 that excess vegetation was turning Dartmoor into a “tinderbox”. On the other, Natural England is currently campaigning for even further restrictions on vegetation management. Such an extension would be deservedly condemned.

 

The Saddleworth Moor fire started on land where Natural England had a de facto ban on preventative burning.[8] The BBC reported that catastrophe caused smoke inhalation for five million people.[9] The next major wildfire will again harm northern cities - and could be even worse. There may be deaths among those fighting the fire as well as among the public caught up in it. You can judge the political impact of a fatal fire.

 

There is public impatience with predictable disasters. The Heathrow fire is the latest example of expert warnings being repeatedly ignored before the inevitable calamity. When the next major wildfire occurs, we will be encouraging legal action against Natural England’s directors under Section 36 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Their negligence is grotesque.

 

With the stakes so high, I was troubled by the lack of understanding shown by the serious errors in February’s letter. The first concerned RSPB research which the letter said had shown “a 73% reduction in traditional winter burning”. The letter suggested that mowing was an alternative. In fact, the RSPB study said that, in the wake of Natural England’s 2021 regulations, there had been a 73% fall in vegetation being controlled through either mowing or burning.[10]


This is crucial because Natural England has entangled both forms of prevention in regulatory overload. A land manager first needs to request permission from Natural England to apply for a burning licence over deep peat, before secondly submitting a licence application to Defra. That typically takes a year. Then, if a licence is granted, they have to seek agreement for an accompanying restoration plan from Natural England. This can take a further two years - even on a moor which Natural England has already assessed as ‘recovering’. One of our members has had three plans rejected.

 

So, when your letter points out that there has been a dearth of applications, it is because of this extraordinarily time-consuming process. Changing the proverbial lightbulb requires inviting Natural England to rewire the house.

 

Natural England versus science


The second error in the letter is its claim that there is a “strength of collective evidence” behind Natural England’s views on peatland management. The reality is the polar opposite. Most senior scientists disagree profoundly with Natural England’s stance.

 

The agency has shrivelled into an echo chamber relying for validation on its network of co-believers who shut out serious science that does not fit their preconceptions.

 

At the heart of this groupthink is the grandly named “International Union for Conservation of Nature – UK Peatland Programme” which Natural England cites in its policy justifications. It is a club of quite junior people, none of whom has a stellar scientific background.

 

It publishes ‘papers’ with no named authors and which are not peer-reviewed. However, it is confident in claiming “overwhelming scientific evidence” for its views which it contends are backed by a “consensus amongst peatland scientists”.[11]

 

Busy ministers might be impressed. Until they realise how senior scientists have felt compelled to produce a peer-reviewed study pointing out the IUCN group’s hubris.

 

Furthermore, academics including Professor James Crabbe of Oxford, Professor Rob Marrs at Liverpool and Dr Andreas Heinemeyer at York have been so concerned that they have warned of “a concerted effort to derail an evidence-based approach”. It meant that policy discussion “about managing heather moorland is neither properly informed nor evidence based.”

 

The IUCN group has refused to talk to these academics, despite it receiving substantial public funding. All policies relying on it are built on a house of cards. Or tinder.

 

Natural England versus Defra


Natural England also sabotages Defra’s success. Perhaps the most remarkable conservation result for your department over the last decade was the recovery in England’s hen harrier population. Ten years ago, the RSPB called for Defra’s intervention because of the desperate situation for this species. And Defra delivered.

 

RSPB scientists observed an astonishing 1,150 % increase in these endangered birds of prey between 2016 and 2023.[14] It was the result of an adroit piece of policymaking: a brood management scheme which gave gamekeepers confidence that they would never have so many hen harriers nesting on their moors that it would threaten their jobs.

 

However, the policy had a fatal flaw. It was not invented in York. Natural England’s headquarters hated Defra’s scheme. Last year it managed to stop brood management taking place. The result? Hen harrier numbers fell 43% in a single year.[15] As The Times put it, “Environment regulator kills off hen harrier conservation scheme”.

 

Natural England is great at breeding jobs for its officials. But not rare birds. With colleagues like this, how is Defra going to meet its obligation under the Environment Act 2021 to halt species declines?

 

And what about Defra’s commitment to 75% of protected sites reaching favourable status? Natural England manages just one upland National Nature Reserve. Yet a staggering 80% of its SSSI units are in unfavourable condition.[17] This drains moral authority from Natural England’s peatland policy.

 

Which leads me to its latest peat map which resulted in The Times headline: “Government’s AI peatland map ridiculed for confusing bog with rock”.

 

Beyond the limitations of AI, this saga revealed a human dimension. When an agency has lost the trust of key stakeholders, it retreats into its offices bereft of the wisdom of hands-on experts.

 

This undermines efficiency in delivering for nature. The National Audit Office is currently looking at value for money. Ahead of its report, you could ask your officials how much it costs the public purse to get one extra curlew to breed on land managed by the RSPB.

 

You could also ask them to contrast that with conservation successes which cost Defra nothing: multiple peer-reviewed studies show that endangered birds thrive on privately owned grouse moors.[19] That is because they share in the protection from predators that gamekeepers provide to grouse.


Grouse moors also provide thousands of jobs in the hard-pressed rural economy.

 

They are where conservation, job creation and social cohesion come together. What we are getting from Natural England is the countryside being scarred and at vast cost to the public purse. If your skills can get the relationship between government and rural communities working, there will be many upsides. I hope to be of service in achieving that.

 

Yours sincerely,


Andrew Gilruth

Chief Executive

Moorland Association


Letter (including attachments)



Sources


[2] NFCC concerns about fires leaping “rural urban interface”: https://nfcc.org.uk/nfcc-urges-public-caution-as-amber-wildfire-alert-issued/

[6] Dartmoor: Defra report said in December 2023 that excess vegetation had made Dartmoor into a “tinderbox”: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-of-protected-site-management-on-dartmoor/independent-review-of-protected-site-management-on-dartmoor

[7] Natural England plans to further reduce preventative winter burning of vegetation:  https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-proposals-to-ban-heather-burning-on-peatland-to-protect-air-water-and-wildlife

[8] Natural England said that the Saddleworth fire started at https://w3w.co/grub.slams.dart . The headkeeper said it started nearby at https://w3w.co/violinist.circular.speakers . Both are in an area where Natural England only allows preventative burns once every 23 years. This ban is documented in the agency’s 2014 Higher Level Stewardship plan for the moor.

[9] Saddleworth fire exposed 5 million to dangerous pollution: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-52208610 and the pollution included lead and cadmium: “because of extensive toxic fallout from factories a century ago… “There’s 100 years’ of pollution buried along with the peat as it formed,” says [Professor Hugh] Coe.” See New Scientist: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23931853-300-smoke-from-moorland-wildfires-may-hold-toxic-blast-from-the-past/ and the result was 28 premature deaths: “over the 7-day period 28 (95% CI: 14.1-42.1) deaths were brought forward, with a mean daily excess mortality of 3.5 deaths per day”: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340286590_Impact_on_air_quality_and_health_due_to_the_Saddleworth_Moor_Fire_in_Northern_England

[10] An RSPB funded study said that there was a 73% reduction in areas being managed by burning or cutting in the immediate aftermath of the Natural England ban on burning imposed under the Burning (England) Regulations 2021. See “Annual extent of prescribed burning on moorland in Great Britain”: https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rse2.389 NB the model was unable to “fully separate burning from cutting on moorland” meaning that neither method of reducing fuel load was taking place in the 73% of land where excess vegetation was previously being managed.

[12] Ashby, 2021 examines the flaw in the IUCN’s position statement: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13157-021-01400-1

[13] Senior scientists criticising ideological impact on policy making: https://www.futurelandscapesforum.com/about-flf 

[14] A 1,150% increase in hen harrier numbers in England between 2016 and 2023. See page 7 of “The status of breeding Hen Harriers Circus cyaneus in the UK and Isle of Man in 2023” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388523157_The_status_of_breeding_Hen_Harriers_Circus_cyaneus_in_the_UK_and_Isle_of_Man_in_2023

[15] The Brood Management Scheme did not operate in 2024 due to technical rules on the distance birds could be moved. There was a 43% fall in the number of hen harrier chicks fledging from 140 to 80. https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2024/09/16/drop-in-numbers-of-nesting-hen-harriers-in-2024/

[17] 80% of SSSI units at Natural England’s only upland NNR are in unfavourable condition https://magic.defra.gov.uk/

 
 

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