What the NE SSSI Fire Register Tells Us - and Why It Matters

Andrew Gilruth
2 days ago
3 min read

Among the Natural England materials released under the Freedom of Information Act is a document that has received relatively little attention: the SSSI Fire Register.

It is not a policy document. It does not advocate any particular land management approach. It does not contain conclusions or recommendations. Instead, it records what Natural England knows. Just as importantly, it also shares what it does not know about wildfire incidents on protected sites.

That makes it a useful way to review claims that wildfire risk and its mitigation are now well understood or effectively settled.

View Register

A contemporaneous record of wildfire experience

The register records individual wildfire incidents on SSSIs, typically including:

site name and designation
date and broad location
whether peat was involved
brief notes on extent or severity
an attributed or suspected cause (where known)

What emerges from even a high-level reading is variation rather than uniformity.

Some entries describe large, damaging incidents. Others record small or contained fires. Some involve surface vegetation. Others note smouldering peat. Some sites appear once, others recur over time.

This matters because it demonstrates that NE’s institutional understanding of wildfire is built on a range of different habitats and site-specific experience - not on a single dominant pattern.

Causes: partial knowledge, not firm attribution

One of the most striking features of the register is how often the ‘cause’ field is either:

recorded as unknown,
expressed tentatively (e.g. suspected, possible), or
limited to broad categories rather than specific triggers.

That is not a criticism of the register. It reflects the reality that ignition sources are often difficult or impossible to determine after the fact.

But it does mean that the register cannot support strong causal claims about wildfire risk being driven by any single land management practice. At most, it supports a conclusion that wildfire causation is frequently uncertain.

That point is important when policy discussion moves from evidence into prescription.

Peat involvement: recognised, but not simplified

The register repeatedly identifies peat involvement in wildfire incidents. In some cases this is limited. In others it is central, particularly where smouldering or prolonged burning is recorded.

What the register does not do is reduce these incidents to a single explanatory variable. There is no consistent link recorded between peat fires and one form of land management, nor any systematic assessment of alternative contributing factors such as weather, access, ignition behaviour or legacy conditions.

Again, that does not weaken the register. It reinforces its value as a record of complexity, rather than a tool for simplification.

What the register does, and does not, support

Taken at face value, the SSSI Fire Register supports several modest but important propositions:

Natural England has long been aware that wildfire impacts on protected sites are variable and recurrent.
Peat involvement is a recognised issue, but not a uniform one.
In many cases, the evidence base is incomplete, particularly in relation to cause.

What it does not support are stronger claims that:

wildfire risk can be confidently attributed to specific management regimes
one category of land use consistently explains observed outcomes
complex site histories can be reduced to general rules

Those limits are not a weakness. They are a reminder of the real world.

Why this matters for how policy is presented

Elsewhere, Natural England’s published materials often convey a high degree of confidence about the relationship between land management, habitat condition and wildfire resilience.

The SSSI Fire Register does not contradict that work - but it does contextualise it.

It shows that, internally, NE operates with an awareness of uncertainty, incomplete data and site-specific variation. That internal caution is appropriate. The question is whether it is always shared externally.

Transparency as context, not accusation

Publishing the register is not about alleging error or impropriety. It is about allowing everyone to see the same underlying material that informs institutional understanding.

The register does not tell us what policy should be. But it does tell us why policy certainty should be expressed with care.

Transparency does not require unanimity. Nor does it require conclusions to go beyond what the evidence can bear.

Sometimes, it simply requires showing the record as it stands.