"There Will Be Fatalities Unless the Prime Minister Acts" — Lord Botham on Defra and the Wildfire Crisis

Writing in The Telegraph, Lord Botham has delivered a blunt assessment of England's worsening wildfire season and the policy decisions behind it.

He argues that the crisis is not simply a product of climate change but the result of two decades of land management choices that have allowed flammable vegetation to build up across the uplands, and that restrictions on preventative winter burning have stripped away the firebreaks that once protected communities and firefighters alike.

He draws on the Moorland Association's own analysis of upland fuel loads, and challenges Defra to explain why it acted against the warnings of the National Fire Chiefs Council and leading wildfire scientists.