There has been a lot of media commentary on the firewave that England is currently experiencing and, quite rightly, there have been calls for greater management of the vegetation (fuel load) within semi-natural habitats and on the rural-urban fringe.
There have also been calls for greater action on climate change and its causes.
The media comments reflect the increasingly polarised debate on how to address the significant threat of wildfire to our croplands, rural-urban fringe and semi-natural habitats. But arguably much of this is ‘hot air’, simply repeating the same statements and policies, and not the much-needed calls for more to be done now, such as vegetation (fuel load) management, to avoid annual firewave events becoming perpetually ‘the worst year yet’ and their associated risk to life. At the end of this blog the GWCT outlines its seven-point call for action.