Fire Prevention
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to help ensure that his Department's processes protect (a) sites of specific scientific interest and (b) other areas from wildfires.
Answered by Mary Creagh
We are committed to supporting land management practices that restore wider ecosystem health, and these can include measures to increase wildfire resilience.
Natural England work with landowners/managers on a site-by-site basis, and will do so over the long-term, to ensure that measures to restore habitats (including re-wetting to build wildfire resilience) are appropriate to local conditions and site characteristics.
We also support research into the causes and effects of wildfire (including the impacts and responses of habitats/species to fire) and the effectiveness of restoration measures to build wildfire resilience.
We encourage all land managers to develop and adopt good quality wildfire management plans.
Furthermore, we have held workshops with a wide range of land managers to inform the new Heather and Grass Management Code. This is being drafted by Natural England and will set clear standards for managing habitats including moorlands.
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