In 1984 a Royal Commission on environmental pollution recommended a ban on straw burning to come into force within five years. In June 1993 a new law, the Crop Residues (Burning) Regulations 1993, took effect in England and Wales.
The law prohibited the burning of various crop residues – straw or stubble remaining on the land after harvesting of the crop – on agricultural land, though after fierce lobbying by the National Farmers Union (NFU) and various landowners the ‘ban’ turned out to be riddled with exemptions.
‘Stubble burning’ is used to quickly and cheaply clear fields. While controlling unwanted plant growth, burning vegetation of any sort can of course create vast clouds of particulate-laden smoke, which is increasingly recognised as a serious health hazard. Fine particulate matter can penetrate deep into the lungs, causing or exacerbating respiratory problems, cardiovascular issues and even increasing the risk of premature death.
Even though the dangers caused by small particles carried in smoke were not as well understood in the 1980s as they are now, stubble burning had long been acknowledged as dangerous and anti-social. Uncontrolled fires also caused repeated damage to habitats bordering fields. John Selwyn Gummer, then Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAF) and now Lord Deben, stated in Parliament in November 1989:
“There have been many cases of smoke drifting across roads, in some cases with disastrous results, smoke-filled homes, dirty smuts, and genuine fears for the safety of property. In addition, there have been considerable losses of hedges and trees and, of course, wildlife. I have received more than 600 letters, many of which have been from hon. Members in all parts of the House and my Department has received notification of more than 2,500 complaints.”
In the same debate straw burning was described as “an unacceptable public nuisance in many parts of Britain”. Gummer noted (in words that are just as pertinent to the discussions around grouse moor legislation today) that the “NFU has not come out in favour of a ban, but has instead proposed a licensing scheme, charging for the issue of licences and withholding them from farmers with a poor track record.” He felt that there would be legal difficulties with such a scheme “in terms of withholding of licences on a discretionary basis.” It was also noted that a current NFU code of practice had “not worked” and that regulations were needed because “a minority of farmers have flouted the regulations year after year.”
The law came into force after a three-year ‘adjustment period’ designed to allow farmers to find straw disposal alternatives. In 2001 MAF was merged with the environmental part of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) and a small part of the Home Office to form the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra)…
Lobbying for exemptions
While the NFU were lobbying for ‘licencing’, in that same debate, Sir Hector Munro, a long-serving politician who grew up near Langholm (an area then dominated by grouse moors owned by the Duke of Buccleuch), made a contribution that at the time perhaps seemed unremarkable, but predicted a battle – like ‘licencing’ – that is still being fought today: heather burning on peatlands.
“Will the Minister also give an assurance that muirburn in the hills will not be affected because it is an essential part of the regeneration of grass and heather in the uplands?”
Like stubble burning, ‘muirburn’ or heather burning sends vast clouds of particulate-laden smoke into the air. Unlike stubble burning, heather burning takes place on blanket bogs and peatland. Easily damaged and critically important for carbon storage, UK peatlands lock an estimated 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon into the ground, making them crucial for climate regulation. They are also incredibly diverse, home to many habitat-dependent plants (like sphagnum mosses, cotton-grasses, and sundew), rich in invertebrates, and the last refuges for a number of breeding birds including Golden Plover and Red Grouse. Yet as of 2024 over 80% of the UK’s peatlands were designated as being in a poor condition.
Their fragility was underlined by an April 2025 article in The Guardian headlined “Whole ecosystems ‘decimated’ by huge rise in UK wildfires”, which stated that
“Vast areas of habitat for animals including butterflies, beetles and falcons have been damaged, and some peat bogs may take “hundreds of years” to recover following one of the driest Marches in decades combined with warmer than average temperatures in April.”
On moorlands owned by shooting estates, bogs and peatlands are drained and burned for Red Grouse of course. Red Grouse prefer a mix of heather at different stages of their growth. Chicks and younger grouse prefer young heather (it’s more palatable and easier to digest), while older birds prefer thicker, denser old growth to nest in. This ‘need’ to create a mosaic of habitats and maximise the numbers of grouse available to shoot leads to the diagnostic ‘chequerboard’ pattern of heather seen on managed grouse moors.
The routine burning of heather in the uplands had long been recognised as a serious social and environmental problem (becoming increasingly urgent as the climate has changed leading to a run of ‘hottest years ever’), but the debates that preceded the 2021 regulations wearingly echoed much of the same discussions that took place before the Crop Residues (Burning) Regulations 1993: intensive lobbying from minority special interests (in this case, shooting estates) and demands for a raft of exemptions.
Some of those pleas fell on deaf ears, thanks largely to a Friends of the Earth (FOE) investigation in 2018 led by Guy Shrubsole and Alasdair Cameron. FOE uncovered evidence that moorland estates managed for grouse shooting were burning on protected blanket bogs – potentially in breach of a recent voluntary agreement to end the practice. FOE noted that the damage was so bad that following formal complaints from RSPB and Ban the Burn campaigners, the European Commission was “undertaking legal proceedings against the UK government for allowing landowners to damage blanket bogs in this way.”
Some pleas fell on deaf ears, but not all of them…
The Heather & Grass Burning Regulations (England) 2021
Almost thirty years after the ban on stubble burning, the Heather & Grass Burning Regulations (England) came into force on 1st May 2021.
While these new regulations saw a partial ban on heather burning, like so many previous laws and regulations that potentially impacted wealthy landowners they came riddled with exemptions lobbied for by the likes of the Moorland Association (the same lobby group that shot itself in both feet just last week by asking Natural England to extend the ludicrous Hen Harrier ‘brood meddling’ scheme (see Hen Harier Brood Meddling: “Illegal killing of Hen Harriers has continued.”) but to remove requirements to add the satellite-tags which had provided the evidence that harriers were being killed on some of the very estates the MA represented).
Landowners could still burn, for example, if :
- the peat was shallow (less than 40cm)
- the land wasn’t within a designated conservation zone such as an SSSI.
- the land was very steep (on a slope of more than 35 degrees)
- more than half of the area is covered by exposed rock or scree
- and even if their land is protected a landowner could still avoid the legislation by applying for a special licence.
Even while it was passing the new regulations, the government knew there was no mapping available that showed how deep peat was, making it impossible to police or enforce the 40cm limit. They presumably also knew that burning any peatland – regardless of its depth and whether it was in a protected area or not – caused damage to not only the peat itself (releasing carbon) but to the plants on the surface and to the animals that lived there. And a clause was inserted that allowed estates to apply for a licence to reduce (in the government’s words) the risk of wildfire by burning the ‘fuel load’ of dry heather (regulating that bogs should be allowed to re-wet would be a far better solution).
With little enforcement, minimal fines, the readily available defence that the fire was ‘accidental’, ‘set by someone else’, or – ironically – set deliberately to lower the risk of wildfires, added to the sense of entitlement that has led to widespread illegal raptor persecution, means that shooting estates have of course continued to burn moorland every year (see for example “Paltry punishment for wealthy company that deliberately burnt moor”)…
2025: New proposals to ban heather burning on peatland to protect air, water and wildlife
Which brings us to the present. According to a 31 March 2025 Defra press-release “New proposals to ban heather burning on peatland to protect air, water and wildlife” would “ban burning on peat in the uplands, improving health and wellbeing of people in nearby communities.”
The government proposes that the definition of deep peat will be revised “so that deep peat is counted as anything over 30 cms rather than 40 cms.” Crucially, this time around they also say that the ban will not be restricted to ‘protected areas’ and that an England Peat Map, a detailed, open-access map of England’s peatlands, covering extent, depth, and condition, “is being developed by Natural England and will be published later in the spring”.
If the proposals are passed (and the arguments against burning were clear back in the 1980s when the Crop Residues (Burning) Regulations 1993 were being debated) the government says the entire area of upland deep peat that is potentially subject to burning will be protected increasing “the area currently protected from 222,000 to more than 368,000 hectares of England’s total 677,250 hectares of deep peat, meaning an area equivalent to the size of Greater London, Greater Manchester and West Midlands put together will now be better protected.”
That, in the words of Guy Shrubsole, writing in a recent and very informative BlueSky thread, is:
“Great news for nature, carbon, & people who’ll be spared from acrid smoke & flooding…Bad news for dukes & billionaires who own grouse moors.”
Completing the consultation.
The consultation can be found on the Defra website at Heather and Grass Burning in England.
The consultation is in four parts (one of which is only relevant to people who use burning as a so-called ‘management tool’) but is very easy to navigate and takes a short time to complete.
Protect the Wild doesn’t typically ‘tell’ supporters what to say in consultations like these, but clearly we support the proposals – with some caveats:
- The ban should be extended to ALL peat regardless of depth and must be mandatory.
- The England Peat Map needs to be brought forward as quickly as possible.
- There needs to be proper enforcement with much tougher penalties for landowners who continue burning on moorlands (the maximum penalty for an illegal burn on an SSSI is currently £2,500 – about what each client pays to shoot grouse on an estate).
Principally, though, this consultation must not be undermined by lobby groups. That happens far too often.
Time and time again the shooting industry has used its connections to halt changes that the public demands. It happened in the run up to the Heather & Grass Burning Regulations: in 2018 the (now ennobled) Michael Gove, then Environment Secretary, was flagged up in a Guardian exposé which accused him of “letting wealthy grouse moor owners off the hook”; in 2020 it was the turn of the then-current Environment Secretary George Eustice (who was from a farming family and very close to the NFU) to be accused of “blocking moves to ban peat burning.”
Never forget that it was lobbying by vested interests that lead to the weakened and largely ineffective 2021 regulations this new consultation is now seeking to strengthen.
- The consultation closes on 25 May 2025 and (again) can be found at https://consult.defra.gov.uk/peatland-protection-team/heather-and-grass-burning-in-england/
