Moorland Association

Moorland Association The Moorland Association is a members organisation who collectively manage over a fifth of the uplands in England and Wales.

Over the last 100 years, considerable areas of heather have been lost through over-grazing, afforestation and bracken encroachment, and since its formation in 1986 Moorland Association members have regenerated and recovered 217,000 acres, smashing the Government’s 2010 conservation target by 170%. Where there has been grouse shooting, heather loss has been lower (70%) than in upland areas not managed for grouse.

The Missing Lynx Project wants to release up to twenty Eurasian lynx near Kielder over five years and expects to apply t...
01/09/2026

The Missing Lynx Project wants to release up to twenty Eurasian lynx near Kielder over five years and expects to apply to Natural England for a licence in late 2026. Nothing would be released before 2027.

The modelled range covers north-west Northumberland, the edge of Cumbria and the bordering parts of southern Scotland. No other part of England was assessed as suitable.

Twenty lynx, at the project's own figure of one deer a week each, works out at roughly a thousand roe deer a year. No figure has been published for what that would mean around Kielder, or for the deer management that currently depends on those deer.

Livestock mitigation and compensation plans are still being drafted. The project took a group of farmers to Germany and Switzerland to see coexistence at first hand and says their feedback is going into that work.

It reports 72% support from 1,700 returned questionnaires. That is its own consultation survey, not independent polling.

Lord Botham writing in today's Daily Mail. Link to article is in comments:
31/08/2026

Lord Botham writing in today's Daily Mail. Link to article is in comments:

Fire chiefs have told government that heavy fuel loads produce fires their crews cannot put out with hand tools. Defra a...
31/08/2026

Fire chiefs have told government that heavy fuel loads produce fires their crews cannot put out with hand tools. Defra and Natural England restrict the cool winter burning that would take those fuel loads down.

The 2025 season, with MHCLG running the response and Defra writing the vegetation rules:

- 46,000 hectares burned across the UK
- Over £460 million in emergency response, damage and lost farming and tourism revenue
- 1.3 million tonnes of CO₂ from peatland fires

Where winter burning is prevented, the fuel remains unbroken and there is nothing in a fire's path to slow it down.

The Moorland Association wants a statutory Wildfire Resilience Board jointly chaired by Defra and MHCLG, carrying a duty to cut fuel loads before ignition, with Fire and Rescue Services working alongside the keepers and farmers who already have the kit and know the ground.

Of the Langdale Moor ground managed in the twelve months before fire reached it, 77% was unburned or burned at low sever...
30/08/2026

Of the Langdale Moor ground managed in the twelve months before fire reached it, 77% was unburned or burned at low severity. None of it burned at high severity.

The 2025 fire ran six weeks across 1,239 hectares of the North York Moors and burned deep enough into the peat to detonate more than twenty devices left from the site's years as a military training area.

Researchers from Swansea, Exeter and Birmingham measured burn depth three weeks in. About 25,000 tonnes of soil carbon went to the atmosphere, the largest peat loss recorded from a single English wildfire. Around 110 hectares inside the perimeter came through unburned, on recently managed ground, worth 6,756 tonnes of carbon at the rate measured on the worst-hit peat.

Cut fox numbers by 43% and crows by 78% and moorland waders raise around three times as many young.That figure comes fro...
29/08/2026

Cut fox numbers by 43% and crows by 78% and moorland waders raise around three times as many young.

That figure comes from an eight-year experiment on moorland in northern England. The habitat was left as it was and only the foxes and crows were changed, which is why it shows cause rather than coincidence.

Golden plover, lapwing, curlew, red grouse and meadow pipit all averaged a threefold rise in breeding success, enough to hold a population steady or grow it.

The survey work says the same thing. Across 320 sample squares in eastern Scotland and northern England, breeding golden plover ran several times denser on keepered grouse moors, tracking the lower crow numbers.

Golden plover lay in an open scrape with no cover to speak of. They are amber-listed and falling nationally, and the ground where they still do well is ground where someone keeps foxes and crows down.

Twenty lynx, one Valley: the Missing Lynx Project explained.A licence application for up to 20 wild Eurasian lynx near K...
28/08/2026

Twenty lynx, one Valley: the Missing Lynx Project explained.

A licence application for up to 20 wild Eurasian lynx near Kielder goes to Natural England before the end of 2026.

The Missing Lynx Project's case rests on peer reviewed modelling that found just one part of the country viable for a self sustaining population: north west Northumberland, the Cumbria border and the southern edge of Scotland. Nowhere else in England qualified, and the project has ruled out wider English expansion. A separate initiative is looking at northern Scotland.

Two figures the project hasn't published yet: what 20 lynx would do to local roe deer numbers, and what farmers get if they lose stock to predation. Both are still being worked out.

The project says it will only apply once it has a plan built with local people that it can call acceptable, feasible and possible to implement. No release would happen before 2027 at the earliest.

We're tracking the application.

Read more, link in replies:

The Environment Secretary Angela Eagle says the answer to wildfire is better management of the uplands. We agree with he...
28/08/2026

The Environment Secretary Angela Eagle says the answer to wildfire is better management of the uplands. We agree with her.

Managing upland vegetation means keeping fuel loads down using the four main tools available: controlled burning, cutting, grazing and rewetting.

Unfortunately rewetting, the tool the Environment Secretary has highlighted as the silver bullet, takes decades to work, time we don't have. That is not better management.

We need to let land managers use all available tools to help prevent the kind of catastrophic wildfires we have seen this summer.

One issue that often goes under the radar when wildfires are raging is the sheer volume of harmful emissions that are re...
27/08/2026

One issue that often goes under the radar when wildfires are raging is the sheer volume of harmful emissions that are released. Look at the latest data for PM2.5 (fine particulate matter), which causes all sorts of serious health problems.

Heather management spared an estimated 7,000 tonnes of carbon at Langdale Moor.Of the ground managed in the 12 months be...
27/08/2026

Heather management spared an estimated 7,000 tonnes of carbon at Langdale Moor.

Of the ground managed in the 12 months before Langdale Moor caught fire, not one hectare burned at high severity.

A new study found that 77% of it was unburned or barely marked.

The fire ran for six weeks last August across 1,239 hectares of the North York Moors and took about 25,000 tonnes of soil carbon with it, the largest peat loss recorded from a single wildfire in England.

Around 110 hectares of peat inside that perimeter came through intact, all of it on ground that had been cut or burned beforehand. At the loss rate measured on the worst-hit parts of the moor, that is close to 7,000 tonnes of carbon still in the ground.

What the study shows is a measurable difference between the treated ground and the rest.

The keepers who managed the land were doing the only work available that changed the outcome.

Read more — link in comments:

UK wildfires have already released nearly 1.4m tonnes of CO₂ in 2026.That's more than 2025 had at the same point — and 9...
26/08/2026

UK wildfires have already released nearly 1.4m tonnes of CO₂ in 2026.

That's more than 2025 had at the same point — and 90% of what 2025 managed in the whole year. There are still 19 weeks to go.

Land managers must be allowed to use the right tools to control fuel loads.

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0845 458 9786

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