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Highland wildfires illustrate need for Scottish Government to provide added resources aimed at tackling them, argues Highlands and Islands MSP Edward Mountain





The recent wildfires sparked a major response from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.
The recent wildfires sparked a major response from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

There are a few things we all have to face up to from a land management point of view in the Highlands, writes MSP Edward Mountain.

The most pressing of these is climate change; our summers are getting hotter, and there is now more rain and more sunshine.

I don’t intend this warning as a sanctimonious lecture based on net zero doctrine or silly green initiatives.

It’s simply an observation from someone who works outdoors and has responsibility for a farm.

Everyone I talk to across the Highlands in this position shares these concerns.

But rather than pursue fanciful ideas which may or may not work, or place the burden on people or business, or even setting up talking shops to decide whose life to make trickier next, we need the government to step up when it comes to mitigation.

People whose job it is to tackle climate change in the long-term can get on with that.

We need mitigation measures now.

We have already seen the spread of wildfires across the Highlands this summer, and they are getting bigger and more common.

For now, we’re fortunate not to see the kind of social devastation wrought in mainland America or Hawaii in recent years.

Scottish Conservative Highlands and Islands MSP Edward Mountain. Picture: Callum Mackay.
Scottish Conservative Highlands and Islands MSP Edward Mountain. Picture: Callum Mackay.

But if they continue to get worse, and current trends suggest they will, it will not be long before homes, lives and infrastructure will be at risk.

Currently, land owners and farmers often use their own equipment such as defoggers and Argocats to fight back the blazes, at their own risk and expense.

These aren’t cheap; to buy and fit these machines can cost a farmer up to £30,000.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service does not have this equipment in good supply, or readily available, presumably because in its history wildfires have not posed the risks they do now.

We need the Scottish Government to create a central resource of this equipment which is mobile and can be moved around Scotland quickly to respond to various incidents.

Infrastructure will be at risk too. I know not everyone in Caithness is fond of the area’s windfarms, but having them ravaged by fire would be in no-one’s interests.

The cost and damage would be immense, and it would have a severe impact on energy supply, not to mention jeopardising the safety of staff at these sites.

A great deal of investment has also gone into restoring peatland.

Fires sweeping across those areas would literally see that investment, and the benefits it brings, go up in smoke.

It’s not good enough to simply say we are going to rewild an area and that will lead to environmental benefit.

It will only put these areas in the crosshairs of nearby wildfires.

Rewilding must not mean no management.

You do not have to be a card-carrying member of the Green party to accept that the weather has changed and we’re living with the impact now.

Highlanders are worried about their land and their surroundings, and want firm action to guarantee they will be kept safe from the consequences.

• Edward Mountain is a Scottish Conservative MSP for the Highlands and Islands

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