"An important time to apply common sense to conservation": Our letter to The Times

Sir,

The unintended consequence of increasing wildfire risk by allowing the views of ecological fundamentalists to replace the common sense approach of indigenous peoples (Comment, Jan 20) is not limited to Australia. In this country we have also used fire for 5,000 years to help produce some of the rarest habitat on earth - heather moorland. The new fashion to reduce controlled burning in the winter to ‘protect’ these landscapes ignores the reality that the intense heat of a summer wildfire can release all the carbon locked up over the last 200 years, in a single night. There has never been a more important time to apply common sense to conservation.

Andrew Gilruth
Director of Communications, GWCT