Why the flames of Britain's wildfires have been fanned by the Green agenda as much as the weather: MATT RIDLEY

Bordeaux and Madrid are threatened by flames. In Sicily, arsonists tied burning rags to the tails of pet cats to spread fires.Here in Britain, drought grips half of England, heathland in Suffolk is ablaze, while the Cairngorms and Peak District smoulder after fire ripped through their national parks earlier this month.It's the climate Armageddon, say the Greens. If only we had built more wind farms and eaten fewer cows, this would not be happening.Hot, dry spells undoubtedly make fires more likely but, awkwardly for those blaming climate change, wildfires are getting less frequent worldwide, not more, as the globe warms.The acreage burned has decreased steadily since 2000, according to Nasa's satellites, and is thought to have almost halved in a century.The great fires of 1871 in Wisconsin and Michigan burned more than a million hectares – an area almost half the size of Wales – long before anybody drove a car, before Joseph Swan's light bulb, when the world was cooler.It is not just the trend that is surprising. Hard to believe, but this year is an unusually quiet year for wildfire: so quiet it is breaking records for lack of fires by this date, even in Europe.If you don't believe me, check the figures produced by the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS): as of last week, the world had seen 106 million hectares burn this year, the lowest at this date since these records began in 2012. A fireman tackles a blaze in Dunwich Heath, Suffolk. Climate change is a handy excuse for politicians who have failed to take measures to prevent wildfires, the writer argues The Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin killed more than 1,200 people and burned around 1.2million acres in 1871 The acreage burned has decreased steadily since 2000, according to Nasa's satellites, and is thought to have almost halved in a century, writes Matt RidleyIn Europe, according to GWIS data, just 3.8 million hectares have burned – less than half the average for this date. That's cold comfort to people driven from their homes in France, but it is nonetheless a fact.The real issue is that climate change is a handy excuse for politicians who have failed to take precautionary measures to prevent wildfires. They can just shrug: it's global warming, innit? The same attitude could be taken towards the drought that currently afflicts seven water authorities, and the subsequent hosepipe bans imposed on residents and businesses.Yet if Britain had more reservoirs, the pressure on water supply would be less acute. The two proposed new reservoirs – the first since the 1990s – in East Anglia and Lincolnshire cannot be built quickly enough.Similarly, it has been known for many decades that in fire-prone habitats, the longer you go without a fire, the worse the fires will be. So preventing the build-up of tinder by controlled burns is the most important factor.The California filmmaker Gabriel Mann's hard-hitting 2023 documentary Hotshot showed in detail how 'fire suppression' has made today's fires harder to control. He has no patience with those who use climate change as an alibi. 'They tell you the sky is falling and it's all the fault of our modern, sh***y climate,' he says. 'But when was the climate not sh***y?'Here in Britain, the Government has consistently and relentlessly demanded less 'cool' burning – low-intensity, controlled fires – in winter on heather moorland, Britain's most fire-prone habitat. Such fires have been used by farmers and gamekeepers for generations to create a mosaic of short and long heather.The differing heights encourage fresh young and more nutritious shoots for sheep and grouse to feed on and makes open areas for rare birds such as golden plover and curlew to nest in.If done in winter it can burn off the long heather plants while leaving the moss underneath barely touched, as demonstrated by a famous video in which a gamekeeper places a Mars bar in the moss, lights a fierce fire over it, then picks up the unscorched, unmelted chocolate bar, unwraps it and eats it. A French firefighter tries to extinguish a wildfire near Saumos, north-west of Bordeaux, on July 24 The Cairngorms wildfire has left much of the land scorched, including this area near Ryvoan BothyJoin the discussionAre environmental policies making Britain’s wildfires worse instead of preventing them?What's your view?Natural England argues that regular cool burning harms the habitat; researchers at York University and elsewhere argue the opposite: that it encourages the growth of mosses by letting light in.But both sides agree that regular cool burns can dramatically reduce the risk of much more damaging wildfires, which burn down through the moss layer and into the peat.Yet Natural England has banned heather burning on deep peat altogether and is pushing hard to limit it further everywhere – or at least tie it up in complicated licensing rules. Cutting heather instead is less effective but better than nothing.As a result, the 'fuel load' or flammable vegetation on heather moorland has been increasing; in places the heather is now waist deep.Tellingly, the National Fire Chiefs Council warned last year that such restrictions on heather management would increase 'the danger to firefighters and the public'.Unlike private owners, bodies such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the National Trust are refusing to burn and reluctant to graze heather moorland, as they join the cult of 'rewilding'.With the support of Government, they plan to mitigate the fire risk by 'rewetting' moors. This is done by placing partial dams in the gullies and streams that cut through moorland, which retains rainwater by slowing its run-off. But this approach is useless in a drought.Case in point: the Tintwistle fire in the Peak District spread from a wild camp in woodland on to a heather moor owned by United Utilities and managed by the RSPB.This moor had been extensively 'rewetted', yet it went up like a torch earlier this summer and the fire spread, smothered Manchester in smoke, burned deep into the peat and was only contained – for now – when local gamekeepers and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue used two diggers and a bulldozer to create a firebreak on its northwest flank on the neighbouring Stalybridge estate.But so quick is Natural England to prosecute landowners and gamekeepers for even inadvertently breaking rules about managing habitat that they were anxious they might be punished for doing this.The nearby Dovestone fire was also started on RSPB- managed land after a man drowned in the local reservoir and his friends commemorated him with fireworks.Earlier this month, the Cairngorms fire, too, began on land owned by the RSPB at Abernethy. The irony is not lost on locals that the very same people who tell us that climate change is an existential crisis are also the ones urging us to stop using the one tool we know helps to mitigate the problem.If your view is that climate change is a massive threat, why are you pursuing policies that increase fuel load?Andrew Gilruth, chief executive of the Moorland Association, says: 'While Scotland has a clear plan to manage the excess vegetation, in England the authorities are obsessed with rewilding and restricting all commonsense measures for reducing fuel loads.'In May, before the drought, Gilruth wrote to MPs who represent moorland constituencies to point out that the number of firefighters is down by a quarter over the past seven years and that the fire service relies heavily on gamekeepers' vehicles, water bowsers and other equipment.Banning the burning of heather means fewer keepers can justify having such equipment. He described the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs's refusal to change policy on heather burning as reckless.Sadly he was proved right.So was I. After I warned last year that Government policy was worsening the fire risk on moorland, it gives me, no pleasure to say: 'I told you so.'