BY BERT BURNETT

The RSPB only ten years ago were practising this technique and they know its benefits for wildlife and fire mitigation but they have chosen to ignore what they know and use this fire management as a club to attack the shooting industry with.

According to them fire is only destructive when carried out by gamekeepers and other upland managers. They have even resorted to calling upland fires ‘peat fires’, a term designed to make politicians and public alike think grouse moor management through controlled cool fires is bad for the environment.

These fires do not burn peat, they do not burn thousands of acres of upland habitat, they simply skim off surface vegetation creating much needed new growth and denying wildfires the fuel they need to become destructive.

If you want to see destructive fires look no further than unmanaged land and upland nature reserves belonging to the likes of the RSPB where these fires have removed thousands of acres of habitat, destroying most if not all the creatures living there and releasing thousands of tonnes and many years’ worth of CO2.

Why do the RSPB feel the need to lie about fire management?

Bert Burnett is a retired gamekeeper with more than fifty years involved in gamekeeping.