Natural England’s Evidence Review on Heather Burning: A Masterclass in Manipulation

When Defra makes decisions about the future of heather burning, it leans heavily on Natural England’s Evidence Review on the effects of burning on upland peatland (NEER155).

This should have been a fair and transparent assessment of the science. Instead, what we have is a document that looks neutral but is riddled with manipulation. Natural England hoped nobody would notice. The Moorland Association has.

The York Study - Included on Paper, Undermined in Practice

The University of York’s Peatland-ES-UK project is the UK’s only long-term, controlled field trial comparing burning, mowing, and no management. If any study deserved fair weight in NEER155, it was this one. Instead:

• Different rules applied: York’s results were singled out for an unusual “external re-analysis” by Lindsay (2020). No other study in the review was treated this way.

• Selective emphasis includes the following examples:

  • York found no difference in net CO₂ uptake between burned and unburned plots. NEER155 buried that in caveats.

  • York found no increase in particulate carbon from burning compared to mowing. NEER155 dismissed it because there was “no unmanaged control.”

  • York found no change in bulk peat density between treatments. NEER155 immediately countered this with a speculative point about charcoal correlations.

  • But when York data suggested burning harmed Sphagnum recovery, or that methane emissions tipped plots into net greenhouse gas losses, NEER155 trumpeted this as strong evidence.

This is not balance. It is cherry-picking.

Others Got a Free Pass

Compare this treatment to how NEER155 handled other studies:

• The EMBER project. This was an observational study, widely criticised for confounding factors yet it was taken largely at face value. Its headline findings (e.g. deeper water tables and higher water colour after burning) were elevated to “strong evidence,” with no embedded third-party critique.

• The Hard Hill experiment. This is a single-site study with highly artificial burn rotations. This had its findings accepted with minimal qualification. No one was parachuted in to reinterpret the data.

• Chronosequence surveys. Those which assume different sites can stand in for a timeline, were repeatedly acknowledged as “imperfect,” but their results were still rolled into the evidence statements without being hollowed out by caveats in the way York’s were.

So York’s study was both included and undermined, creating the illusion of fairness while neutralising inconvenient findings.

The Tricks of the Trade

Natural England’s methods look systematic on paper. But in practice NEER155 used a series of tricks to bury inconvenient conclusions:

• Overloading with complexity. The review runs to hundreds of pages, drowning the York findings in technical detail and leaving only the anti-burning bits visible in the “evidence statements.”

• One-sided caveats. Every neutral or positive York result is immediately followed by reasons not to trust it. But equally uncertain negative results from other studies are left to stand unchallenged.

• Selective weighting. York’s experiment, the only controlled trial of its kind, was given a low evidence score. Chronosequence studies with less robust design were still leaned on to support generalised conclusions.

• Framing by omission. NEER155 never elevates York’s “no significant harm” results into its summary conclusions, despite being the strongest type of evidence. Instead, those findings are left buried in tables and appendices.

Why It Matters

This is not an academic quibble. NEER155 is the evidence base Defra relies upon when tightening restrictions on heather burning. If Natural England manipulates the process, policy risks being built on sand.

The consequences are real:

• Estates are losing a proven tool for managing wildfire risk.

• Rural communities are facing more regulation on the basis of a skewed “consensus.”

• Policymakers will believe they are following the science when in fact they are following a biased filter of it.

Time for Natural England to Come Clean

The Moorland Association has seen through the spin. Natural England must:

1. Withdraw NEER155. It cannot stand as a credible evidence base.

2. Rebuild the review and apply its own rules consistently, without selective caveats or one-sided framing.

3. Be transparent and stop hiding behind complexity to bury inconvenient truths.

Natural England may have hoped nobody would notice. But we have. And we won’t let it pass unchallenged.

📧 Stay updated on all moorland issues - sign up for our free Newsletter.