Fylingdales Moor Wildfire, 2025: A Climate-driven Threat to the Natural and Historic Environment

Nikhil Scott: Hi everyone. Yes, welcome to our webinar about the Fylingdales Moor wildfire. My name is Nikhil Scott. I'm a Senior Policy Adviser focusing on climate change at Historic England. I'll just pass over to Sally to say hello as well.

Sally Evans: So, I'm Sally Evans. I'm the aerial Survey Manager at Historic England. Aerial survey for part of the archaeological investigation team.

Nikhil Scott: Brilliant. Thank you. Well, we'll make a start then talking about the wildfire that broke out in the North York Moors National Park last year, and this webinar is going to be sort of expanding on the case study that was published in the summer about this event. So, you might be forgiven for not having heard about this at all before maybe our case study or before more recent headlines. I myself despite being from Yorkshire had never heard of this until sort of autumn last year and I first started working on this after having seen this picture which you can see on the screen in front of you of what should be a very beautiful sort of summer day. You've got the kind of green grass and the almost clear blue sky. That's kind of marred by this kind of line of devastation sort of that's still smoking from the wildfire leading up to Leela Cross, which is a scheduled monument that sits on top of a Bronze Age burial mound. This is a sort of artificial man that you're seeing a kind of ancient site that's being affected by a very modern crisis. And I thought this was quite an emotional picture. I thought it told quite a significant story and I kind of looked into it and sort of spoke with Andrew who was leading the team from Historic England that was responding to this wildfire and it became very clear to me that this was a story that needed to be shared more broadly so that we understood why it happened and what to do about such things in the future. So, we're going to sort of take you through the wildfire now. What this is not is a sort of detailed analysis of all the different things that make a wildfire happen. As you can see from the slide there, this is a climate driven threat to the national historic environment. We're going to be looking at this through the lens of climate change and the ongoing climate crisis.

[screen/slide change at 00:02:18]

Nikhil Scott: So, if I just move along to the next slide, I'll give you a bit of context. So what happens to a heritage landscape that's been affected by wildfire? What happened in Yorkshire last summer? So in late June, a fire broke out in Langdale forest in the North York Moors National Park. A later investigation thought that the likely trigger was somebody cooking outdoors and as we're going to go on to explore the sort of conditions were ripe for a wildfire. This sort of spread sort of burning for several weeks before jumping from the forest to the sort of surrounding moor. At one point it covered five square kilometers in two days and was declared a major incident as it spread across the moor. The picture you can see on the left there is a map which shows the sort of extent and on the right, you see satellite imagery of what you can see the sort of devastation visible from space. The wildfire started in June, as I said, but in some places, the smoke was still being observed until Christmas, which meant that it lasted depending on how you like to slice it about six months half a year. This wildfire was one of the largest ever recorded in England. The burned area was around 18 square kilometers. If you include the sort of area affected by the sort of firefighting techniques, the kind of fire breaks, that number jumps up to about 25 kilometers or thereabouts. A sort of very significant event which we're going to talk to a bit in this presentation.

[screen/slide change at 00:03:49]

Nikhil Scott: So, what are we going to talk about? We're going to do start with an analysis of the wildfire as a climate changedriven crisis. We're going to talk about the impacts on people heritage and the natural environment. And then we're going to talk about recovery and the role of heritage what Historic England and other partners are doing to restore this landscape and become better prepared for these crises. A few points in advance as well. When we talk about we're going to sort of avoid using too much jargon and where we do have to use it, I'll sort of try and explain it as we go. Historic England understands the historic environment, you know, very old places and the natural environments, what you might think of as more classic nature to be sort of intertwined. You can't really separate one from the other and in a place like the North York Moors National Park, it's a beautiful landscape, but it's also a place that's been fundamentally shaped by humans going back thousands and thousands of years. So we're going to look at this through the lens of again a place that is heritage and nature all in the same place. Another part of this presentation is that to a significant extent I am going to let the pictures do a lot of the talking or at least some of the talking because that the pictures are how I got involved in this work personally. I mainly focus on buildings and retrofit but the pictures really do speak a thousand words and you often get quite a lot of emotion from them and you can sort of feel what people on the ground must have been feeling and the emotions that they evoke in us are very interesting as well. Some of those pictures are taken by our colleagues by Andrew who couldn't be here today took a lot of these photos himself on the ground in Fylingdales Moor of what was happening. Some of them come from colleagues. This one is an aerial shot of the smoke produced by the Maritime and Coast Guard Agency for example. And I think these pictures really show what words will sometimes struggle to tell. So, we'll have some pictures along the way okay.

[screen/slide change at 00:05:58]

Nikhil Scott: So, while Fylingdales Moor Wildfire as a climate driven crisis sort of starting with a photo which again was taken by one of our historic England colleagues on the ground, you have again what should have been a sort of pleasant summer day marred by sort of churned up ground and a rather ominous fire engine in the background.

[screen/slide change at 00:06:22]

Nikhil Scott: Slightly depressingly almost as soon as this case study was published, it almost became slightly out of date because up until 2026 last year 2025 was the warmest summer on record for the UK. It was a very hot year, a sort of crown it has now lost to 2026 and the year is not even over yet. So, what were the conditions last year that formed the backdrop for this wildfire as a climate driven crisis? Well, I've got a sort of quote there that's from the at the top which pulls the whole thing together in a reasonably succinct way. That climate change is making extreme weather both more likely and more extreme. And this looks like a lot of things, but one of the things it looks like are wildfire conducive conditions. Things being dry and easy to burn. So, what did that look like last year? So, the spring of 2025 was the warmest that the UK has experienced since records began. Again, that's probably not true anymore, unfortunately and the summer was also the warmest again until this year, I think and as a direct result of this unnaturally hot year, there were a lot of drought and dry weather incidents 319 across the year and a drought that was declared in Yorkshire in June so a very hot, very dry year and as you would logically expect, when things are hot and dry, it makes them easy to burn. And last year was also a record-breaking year for wildfire coverage in the UK. You have on the screen there a graph from the global wildfire information system which and those bars show the in hectares the burned area the amount of land that was burned in each year due to wildfires and as you can see the the sort of red bar for 2025 which is the penultimate one is far and away the largest bar, the bar for 2026 I suspect is higher now than it was when I exported this graph. Again, it's depressing how this information needs updating almost as soon as it's published. So, you can sort of draw a link there between the heat and the fire as well.

[screen/slide change at 00:08:38]

Nikhil Scott: So, that heat was absolutely not anomalous. Met Office researchers determined that last year's high temperatures were made 70 times more likely to occur by human caused climate change. You might see language like this very frequently in the context of sort of natural disasters, this idea of more likely. It sort of speak it's referring to this thing which is used in the climate science world sort of an attribution analysis determining how much more likely is something to happen because disasters have always happened but how much more likely are they to happen and so last year was a lot more likely because of climate change. However, it's also important to remember that last year was not an anomaly. Of the top five, and I suppose now top six hottest summers in UK history have happened since the start of this century. You have the 2025, 2018, 2006, 2003, and 2022, and unfortunately now 2026. You can draw there's a pretty compelling case to be made I think here between hot years and wildfire years made very clearly in Fylingdales by the fact that Fylingdales had another wildfire in 2003 and 2003 was another one of the hottest summers that the UK's ever had.

[screen/slide change at 00:09:53]

Nikhil Scott: So, a pretty convincing link can be made between rising global temperatures and the creation of conditions that are perfect for the spread of large wildfires. It's this national context and really global context that forms the backdrop for a local crisis that then took place on Fylingdales Moor in the national park last year. And if you'd like more information about how climate change is driving intense weather in the UK, the Met Office produces a lot of really great work. So, I would encourage you to check it out.

[screen/slide change at 00:10:25]

Nikhil Scott: So, what are the impacts of the wildfire on people, on heritage, and on the environment? So, we're going to cover people first, and we're going to start with this photograph, which you can see on the slide here. This is another one of the Coast Guard images, and I think it's one of the most harrowing ones really that we have in this presentation. What you see here is a a farmer driving their tractor in an attempt to create fire brakes. Fire brakes are where you dig up the ground to sort of impede the spread of the fire. And you can see that kind of black edge and all those lights is the sort of edge of the fire. So this person is perilously close to the blaze but are sort of putting themselves in danger to present the spread of the fire in sort of you know damaging their land although they work in the process, and unfortunately there's quite a few images along these lines.

[screen/slide change at 00:11:20]

Nikhil Scott: This one also sort of tugs on the heartstrings quite significantly. This is a photo of fire approaching quite a large caravan park so those bright white lights that you can see on the right hand side are is the fire and you have to imagine you know it's almost impossible to imagine if you haven't experienced something like this the feelings of the people in that place fearing for their life, fearing for their property and yes, having to sort of decide whether or not to leave, to flee if they can and so yes, another compelling aerial image.

[screen/slide change at 00:11:98]

Nikhil Scott: The last one we have here is also quite a tricky one. You have a picture of a firefighting effort that was conducted from the air in August and I think this one is almost difficult to look at for a different reason because what you see is somebody you again putting themselves in danger in a sort of active wildfire area, but you just look at that enormous sort of stretch of burnt land and you see how small that sort of container of water is and you think they're going to need more helicopters. They're going to need a lot more and a lot more water, and we're going to come back at the end to this idea of what do we take away from this? What more do we need to do to prepare for events like this? Why do we start with people? People are the ones who are affected now, whose lives are in danger but I think starting with people also leads us to this idea of what is the North York Moors National Park. It's a landscape that might seem natural, but it looks the way it does because of generations, thousands of years of human history. People who have managed change sort of cultivated the land in the modern day that's everyone from tenants, land owners, people who work in agriculture and tourism, the people who were in those pictures we just saw but you also have people who have lived there for a very very long time. The area is in itself a heritage asset and it has tremendous cultural value not just people who live there and who visit it but stretching back an awfully long time. You can think of this landscape as having sort of layers of history if you like. That's how I've tried to look at it, and we're going to explore some of those layers now when as we move into talking about the impact on heritage.

[screen/slide change at 00:13:39]

Nikhil Scott: So, often times when we talk about heritage, we're talking about sort of designated monuments, things that are protected by law in some way to mean that it's hard to sort of change them or do things to them to make sure that they are preserved in their sort of unique form. That is part of the story of Fyliingdales. Certainly 27 scheduled monuments were within the area of the wildfire and many suffered damage as were six listed buildings. So, on the first slide when we saw Leela cross that is a scheduled monument that narrowly avoided the worst of the blaze, but the nature of Fylingdales Moor and much of that national park means that there's a very different kind of heritage that's also affected. Much of the land in Fylingdales is peatland and peat is a type of wetland which well peatlands are a type of wetlands I should say. There you can sort of think of them as a bit like a bog. A bog is a slightly different thing but a bit like a bog. And you have these kind of waterlogged soil deposits which accumulate over years and they have a very interesting very, very various things that are interesting about it but one of them is that because of this sort of waterlogged low oxygen nature things that fall in there tend to get preserved. Peat becomes a sort of time capsule. So, the Peat serves as an archaeological record of environmental change, but Peat also has the strange side effect of preserving things that might fall into it. So, you have on the left there an example of some archaeology that's revealed for the by the wildfire of what was happening as a result of this wildfire was that things were being discovered that we didn't know were there. So, you have an example there of some prehistoric rock art. You have sort of cut marks on a small stone slab which was found on the Robin Hood's bay road across Fylingdales Moor sort of like a little table, there was a picture a few slides back where you could see something which looks a bit like a fireplace. Again, sort of evidence of human occupation human everyday lives and there's a lot of learning to be gained from these things but part of the challenge of the reveal of this stuff though it might seem at first like a silver lining is that it was resting safe and sound in the peat, once it's exposed, it's in danger to from erosion from sort of wind and from water. So, a great challenge is then created for local custodians, for the National Park Authority and for Historic England and similar heritage bodies to figure out what has been revealed, what do we need to do about it, what's really important and needs to be preserved, what do we have the time to save before it gets damaged. Another way that archaeology has been revealed is by the firefighting methods. One of the ways, as I mentioned earlier to prevent the spread of fire is to dig up the land to sort of act as a barrier and you can see on the right there, another picture taken by Andrew, I think, was a picture of example of a fire break dug to hinder the spread of the blaze. A really important way of stopping wildfires, but at the same time, it can have the unfortunate side effect of digging up archaeology that was buried. Another sort of learning to take away that it's important to make sure there's that communication between heritage bodies and those involved in firefighting efforts to make sure that those fire brakes are dug in places where they can have the least possible impact on anything that might be underneath.

[screen/slide change at 00:17:16]

Nikhil Scott: When I say layers of history, I think that idea is best shown by just the sheer breadth of everything that was affected by the wildfire. I just showed you a picture of prehistoric stone art from the sort of Neolithic period thousands and thousands of years ago. Now, I'm showing you an example of a monument that was damaged that dates from World War II. So, this is an aerial photograph of a World War II bombing decoy. This one I think I believe is a scheduled monument and as you can see very heavily damaged by the fire, very blackened. What these were sort of speaks to Fylingdales link with the military over a long period of time. So, during World War II, this area was turned into a sort of decoy. What you see is the lines there are sort of trenches that would then be filled with lights. The idea being that when the German air force, the Luftwaffer, was flying overhead, they might be tricked into thinking there was a town or a factory or something of significance below and they would bomb a moor instead of bombing an actual town or factory or something of significance. This has now been sort of one of the many casualties of the fire.

[screen/slide change at 00:18:38]

Nikhil Scott: Another kind of military usage of the Moor is it's the fact that it's been used as a live firing range which means that sometimes you have the sort of scattering of unexploded ordinance, so you can see on the right there some of pictures of little unexploded ordinance, and you can see on the left a picture of one that was found on the ground. The problem with these is that just because they are unexploded doesn't mean that they won't explode when exposed to a wildfire. And at as of the time of kind of publishing the case study, at least 25 of these had actually exploded as a result of the wildfire, which makes firefighting operations a lot more difficult, if there's a risk that something's going to blow up. So, there was actually an anecdote I remember hearing of a firefighter who was very close to an explosion. I believe they were sort of unharmed. But again, it sort of speaks to uh another dimension of this crisis that you might not have that you might never consider the idea that you could be trying to put the fire out and suddenly you're hearing and experiencing something that's belongs on a World War II battlefield, not a national park in the 21st century. So, again another sort of complication that's unique to this place as a historic environment.

[screen/slide change at 00:19:54]

Nikhil Scott: So, speaking now more about the natural environment by which I mean the sort of landscape and the nature and the sort of life that's here. We have to come back to Peat here, not a Peat’s expert for my sins but I have learned an awful lot about Peat through this process and it's really a very interesting type of landscape because it does so many things. So, in a sort of recent government memorandum which we quote in the case study, it explains how healthy functioning peatlands do provide a variety of ecosystem services, which is to say things that nature does as a result of simply being nature that we humans benefit from. This includes acting as a haven for wildlife and filtering drinking water which passes through the region. Flood mitigation, making flooding less likely, capturing carbon from the atmosphere. Peatland does an awful lot and the UK has a fair bit of it, but unfortunately, 80% of England's peatlands are now degraded and damaged and there's a variety of reasons for that climate change might well be one of them, as you can see here in the Fylingdales, but another is simply how we manage lands if you have an area of land which is peatland and you want to use it for something maybe it's growing food or building a building, you will have to drain and remove the peat in order to sort of work that land which can come with unfortunate environmental trade-offs when you lose all these things. So, peat has a lot of interesting characteristics, what happens then when you burn up the peat and you can kind of see these two pictures which show the sort of disturbing state that Fylingdales was left in. I believe both again taken by our development advice team as they survey the scene. The one on the left is another one of these ones I find particularly striking. This kind of almost Tolkenesque scene of a sort of awful landscape with that sort of one lone tree, and then on the right you have these clumps of dirt of earth that are sort of all that's left of what would have been a sort of relatively thriving peatlands bog.

[screen/slide change at 00:22:16]

Nikhil Scott: So, what are some of the services of peats that you lose when you burn when a wildfire tears through the region? So on the left, you have another graph there from the global wildlife information service which shows carbon emissions. Now, the reason carbon is such an important part of the burning of peat is that peat deposits are extremely carbon rich and therefore perform a very important climate service. Healthy petlands vegetation will capture carbon dioxide through the process of photosynthesis, but because Peat doesn't properly decompose because it acts as this sort of preservation device, that carbon does get released back into the atmosphere but sinks in and forms a carbon store. In the UK alone, 3.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide are stored in peatland. That's an awful lot to try and make that ridiculous figure a bit more digestible, for context, in 2024, the total carbon emissions of the UK as calculated by the climate change committee were about 413 million tons, which means that there's roughly 7.5 times more carbon stored in our peatlands than was emitted by the entire nation in 2024. What does that mean? It means that when you burn Peat, you release an awful lot more carbon into the atmosphere. And as hopefully everybody knows, greenhouse gas emissions, and the warming effect that they're having on our planet are what's causing the climate crisis to begin with so when Peat is burned, this stored carbon is released and research from the University of Cambridge shows that wildfires that burn peat have led have caused up to 90% of annual UK fired driven carbon emissions since 2001. What this graph shows that red line are the emissions from 2025 and the blue line is the average from 2003 to 2025. So, as you can see last year was an unusually carbon intensive year as far as the emissions from wildfires go and Fylingdales won't be the only reason for that but it will be part of the reason for that and you can see on the right there a sort of picture of the sort of damaged landscape as well which and again this sort of sort of slightly sad image of this lone tree. So, that's one of the things that happens when you burn peat. What else can happen? What about water which is a very important part of climate adaptation and the climate crisis in general that doesn't get the attention it deserves. Part of the challenge of a sort of event like this is it causes sort of cascading climate risks. As I mentioned, one of the benefits of Peat is that it acts as a water regulator. It sort of filters water, which is a very interesting surface, but it also makes floods less likely because wetlands are as you might assume very wet, very soggy. They absorb water and that's just part of the nature of peat. If you remove peat in sort of vast amounts very quickly that then raises the risk of flooding off the moor, you could have downstream flood damage and you have risks of soil erosion and silting. Additionally because peatlands regulate flow during wet and dry periods. If you remove them, it means that drought flood cycles can get even more extreme and there can be reduced base flows. Basically, removing wetlands will make an area drier and as we said earlier since drought was one of the things that formed the conditions to the Fylingdales wildfire, the wildfire itself makes more wildfires more likely. Another thing which again we perhaps don't think about when we think of these events is the impact on nonhuman life. Since peatlands are major habitats for local biodiversity, destruction will mean the loss of an awful lot of species that rely on pet conditions or mosses or just the environment through which to move through. The UK is has a terrible problem with being one with its nature depletion and the sort of loss of our native species and events like this do not help in the slightest.

[screen/slide change at 00:26:33]

Nikhil Scott: So, these are some of the various ways in which the wildfire affected people and people as a part of the history of the place, the heritage of the place and all the ways in which heritage were affected. And also a sort of insight into how the natural environment too is affected. Part of the challenge of writing this is that while it was important to get this information out there, the story out there, it's slightly too soon to say what the impact will be in terms of things like flooding and drought over the long term, but it's a bit of a concerning image, which is why recovery and work after the wildfire is so important and there's a really important role for heritage and actors like Historic England and many others to play and Sally is going to speak to this in a bit more detail now.

Sally Evans: Hey everyone. Okay, thank you for that. So, I'm going to pick up the story at the point where really the immediate emergency response begins to move more into recovery. So, one of the important lessons that we've learned from Fylingdales is that heritage recovery cannot be separated from the recovery of the natural environment. So, the archaeology, peat, vegetation, water systems, and present day land use all form part of the same landscape. So, as we've seen, the fire exposed archaeological remains, but it also left them extremely vulnerable. So, once that protective vegetation and peat has gone, rainfall, surface water movement, and erosion can cause further damage very quickly and so therefore, our response and others was needed and we needed to also be both rapid and collaborative.

[screen/slide change at 00:28:22]

Sally Evans: So, I mean, the first priority really was that there wasn't even a full understanding of the scale of the fire as it had after the emergency response was first stood down. So, Historic England and the National Park needed to build understanding and capacity in a very quick time frame to understand what the issues were and manage the large recovery. So, in November 2025, Historic England approved a 100,000 pound capacity building grant for the North York Moors National Park Authority and really they are leading the work now on the recovery efforts. Historic England and particularly the aerial survey team were also heavily involved at first to try and capture the scale of the fire. So, our aerial reconnaissance team were one of the first to get out and undertake vertical photography of the fire site. So, we managed to get full coverage at 8 cm resolution within a couple of weeks of the fire ending and that allowed us to really rapidly assess the scale of the issues and start to assess and map some of the archaeological features that have been exposed. And then this helps the national park prioritize what they want to do. I've said I've already said the scale of the fire was 25 square kilometers including the fire brakes but the fire brakes themselves covered 50 km. So, you can see that the affected landscape is far beyond what could be fully assessed using traditional ground survey alone and so therefore remote access via aerial sources is needed. So, the funding that we provided to the national park, this capacity grant supported them to purchase a drone. So, they've been undertaking uh UAV surveys and Historic England also provided best practice in terms of how to use the drone and what to do next. The funding supports further archaeological recording and assessment and including schedule monuments and significantly remains newly exposed by the fire. So, we're not just focused on designated assets. It's all the heritage that's been exposed. It's not simply about producing an archaeological record though. The information is being shared across disciplines and is used to inform wider decisions about the conservation, erosion, vegetation recovery and future land management including grazing. So, the aerial imagery particularly at the start was invaluable for all the stakeholders involved in managing this Moorland. The capacity building element is particularly important from a climate resilience perspective. It allows the park enhance remote sensing skills and equipment that can support continued monitoring and responses to future incidents. So, they've really taken this and have ran with it.

[screen/slide change at 00:31:19]

Sally Evans: So, that brings us onto the wide point about archaeological investigation and how it can actively support environmental recovery rather than just sitting alongside it as a separate activity and there really is a role for heritage organizations in this. The detailed three-dimensional data that we and the national park have collected for archaeological purpose has a much wider value. It provides accurate baseline data against which change can be measured and it helps identify where limited resources will have the greatest effect. For example, it can show where water is becoming more channeled or damaged, where erosion is developing or where exposed earth works require urgent stabilization. The same evidence can therefore inform erosion control, receding, hydraological analysis and the monitoring of recovery measures. Now, I will say that it's been almost a year since the fire and the fire ended and actually the recovery measures are still really in early days. So, at the moment they're focused on reinstating the fire breaks but it's good to see that an an integrated response to climate risk. So, we're not treating heritage biodiversity pet and water as separate interests. We're using a shared understanding of the landscape to support more targeted and effective decisions.

[screen/slide change at 00:32:45]

Sally Evans: Okay, so this is a lovely drone image produced by the National Park Authority near Lattergate and it's a series of hollowways, trackways and there are actually tank tracks running across the mall as well and you can see the sort of level of detail that this approach provides. So, it's really detailed imagery. So, this network which cross cuts northeast to southwest across the fire damaged landscape are archaeological significant but they can also influence how water moves across the moor. So, at the moment they're channeling water across and down and out of the moor and so they're looking at ways that maybe that that can be impeded because once the vegetation has been removed existing depressions can accelerate erosion and it also obviously can impact archaeological deposits because it will also wash those away and it also makes re-vegetation much more challenging if the water is constantly rushing off the top soil. Detailed terrain information allows the recovery teams to understand those relationships and target interventions rather than applying a uniform response across very varied landscapes. So, that is we're really trying to target where work is being undertaken. So, let me just show you a bit more now about what those interventions will look like.

[screen/slide change at 00:34:17]

Sally Evans: So, one of the interventions that has been applied is the use of protective matting. So, this image here shows a cross dyke a later prehistoric cross dyke on the moor. This one is a designated asset. My colleague described the conditions on the ground here as if you stepped on the monument, it felt like you were walking on talc. It was so ashy and so dry so it was just getting blown away by the wind. So, this matting has been laid over a particularly vulnerable area. So, the immediate purpose is to try and stabilize the exposed surface and reduce further erosion but it can also help to retain moisture and create more favorable conditions for vegetation to reestablish. So, it illustrates that recovery is not simply a matter of waiting for the landscape to turn and turn green again and return to normal. And actually I've got an image coming which sort of shows that that hasn't happened whatsoever but without heavy intervention heavy rainfall can move rapidly across the burnt surface deepen erosion channels and carry material away. Measures like this protect archaeological earthworks, but they can also support peatland restoration, water retention, and the wider recovery of the Moore. Again, heritage protection and climate adaptation are working together.

[screen/slide change at 00:35:37]

Sally Evans: Okay. So, the value of continuum monitoring becomes clear when we compare the same site at different points in its recovery. So, the image on the left was taken by my team in September last year and the image on the right again taken by my team in May 2025 and you can see that besides where the matting has been applied very little has changed in the intervening months. Again, this is the cross dyke that we were just looking at on the previous slide but the comparison demonstrates the importance of establishing an accurate baseline and return to monitor change and our team is hoping to continue to monitor change as the reinstation happens. It allows us to assess whether interventions are working and identify any continuing deterioration. The image on the right was actually taken with a higher resolution camera system so that one was at 5cm resolution so that improved detail helps us map subtle earthworks and measure change more confidently, and just a plug, all the aerial imagery taken by Historic England is available to view on the air photo explorer which you can find on the web. For a climate related incident, this evidence is crucial. So recovery is a process, not a single intervention, and decisions need to be adjusted as the landscape responds.

[screen/slide change at 00:37:06]

Nikhil Scott: Great.

Sally Evans: Back to you, Nikhil.

Nikhil Scott: Thank you Thanks, Sally. So, where does that leave us? What needs to happen and what is being done? In June this year, the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs announced the provision of up to 3.2 million pounds to restore land affected by the Fylingdales Moor wildfire. The CEO of the park authority said that this investment will enable us to begin repairing the extensive fire brakes that were created to contain the blaze, reestablishing peatland habitats, stabilizing vulnerable areas, and creating a landscape that is better able to withstand the challenges posed by a changing climate. Definitely a step in the right direction, but the question has to be asked if things if that will go far enough. There's lots to be learned from Fylingdales and there's definitely lessons still being learned all the time as we understand more and more about what has happened. It's essential that people on the ground regional stakeholders and national ones can collaborate smoothly during a disaster like this to limit the impacts that are happening at the time and to help recovery afterwards. Lots of work being done at kind of high levels of government to understand what do we need to do to tackle wildfires and all kinds of climate related disasters given that climate change is making these events far more likely. There is no simple solution but the most straightforward one that you can read in more detail on the case study are I think that what we need is a dual approach which combines climate adaptation and climate mitigation. As far as adaptation goes, we need regional and national strategies to improve local resilience to crisis and we need more work to boost the preparedness of local fire and rescue and other authorities to tackle blazes specifically in the historic environment. An engagement with land managers is also needed to ensure a proactive approach is taken. It's there's so much of it is about the work you do before the fire happens to make sure that everyone knows their their roles and sort of mitigation measures have been put in place. The other part of this is far more wide reaching than just Fylingdales Moor but the other part is simply climate mitigation, the fact that as we as I discussed at the start, this was a crisis that you can directly link to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions and we need a societywide effort to reduce those emissions and to stop our degradation of the environment. Doing this is the best sort of long-term way of making things like this less likely to happen in the first place and so any approach that does adaptation or mitigation is going to struggle. You need both to reduce the chance of it happening in over the very long term and to mean that people know what to do and the blaze can be tackled more effectively when it does happen. So, I hope you found this interesting how this wildfire as a case study of how climate change touches all parts of our lives all parts of our society. This crisis affected people's lives, their livelihoods, irreplaceable heritage and the natural environment all rolled into one all in one place and these cross- cutting impacts can only be effectively tackled by a similarly cross-cutting approach from across society to adapt and to mitigate. And Yes, I think we can we've got a few minutes left, so we can open it up to any questions.

Host: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much both of you. Yes, really really interesting presentation and I'll bring us onto the Q&A section now. So, it looks like we've got a few questions coming through. So, we'll have about sort of five to seven minutes for questions so just we'll obviously try and answer what we can. Might not be able to get through to all the questions but I'll hand over now to Nikhil and Sally again to have a look through those.

Nikhil Scott: Brilliant. Thanks. Are there any of the technical ones that are jumping out to you Sally from the list? They're all quite, a lot of them are quite technical. Maybe one I could start us off with is, do fire services have heritage assets mapped and do they always refer to that mapping in events of the fire? My understanding is not really and certainly not to the extent that you would want which is part of the challenge that firefighting has to happen, fire breaks have to be done but it's important that people understand where the heritage is so they don't dig in the wrong place essentially and that I think is one of the major learnings that we took away from this is the need for for information sharing and mapping. Any sort of jumping out to you Sally?

Sally Evans: Yes, there's one now on is there a standardized recommendation for how to undertake initial large scale assessment e.g. workflow, checklist, or other guidelines? Now, I think that has been an outcome really from this wildfire that teams within historic England are really considering. So, I think in terms of guidance it will be a watch this space and that seems to be in the plan but at the moment, no. There is some guidance from the 2002 wildfire at Fylingdales which you can find on the historic England website but I think we probably need something a bit more up to date.

Nikhil Scott: There's a question there's quite a broad one do you know if preventative measures will be implemented to mitigate the impacts of future wildfires. I think that's definitely an ongoing conversation nationally. I think they are trying to figure out how best to do that. I saw a a sort of live stream of a committee hearing in parliament I think it was last week where they were talking about what needs to be done practically on the ground to make wildfires less likely. As far as Fylingdales, I'm sure that the National Park Authority will be looking at preventative measures but wouldn't want to speak on their on their behalf, but I'm sure they will have information out there.

Sally Evans: There's another question about the fire service and was any kind of heritage planning with the fire and rescue team in place before the fire occurred and no that wasn't in place before but there was a meeting more recently. So, hopefully that is happening now.

Nikhil Scott: And as I said at the end there, it's all about what you do beforehand I think part of the question was someone was a historic environment record manager intending to reach out to their fire service. So, yes absolutely kind of getting in touch, sharing data, talking about what to do in the event of something is definitely a really important first step.

Sally Evans: I don't know. I think they're planning to use matting to try and stop the flow of water through those hollowway channels that I showed you but I don't know what the matting was that was used on the prehistoric cross dyke.

Nikhil Scott: Another point in the chat, not a question but a sort of note that the site is also a site of special scientific interest and also designated under various kinds of European nature protections which I just want to highlight simply because it speaks to this broader issue of places aren't just one thing and certainly in the case of Fylingdales it's not a historic landscape or a natural one, it's both and it's got designations of all kinds to kind of reflect that really interesting environment which makes preparation and then recovery complicated but also conversely makes it somewhere where you really want to protect and recover afterwards.

Sally Evans: We've got a question about instances of historic structures, collection stores or museums being impacted by wildfires. And actually the latter, I don't know the answer to that about collection stores or museums. Probably not because they tend to be urban based and wildfires tend to be more rural, but not always. In terms of historic structures then yes in this case, there was a lot of archaeology and designated features that were impacted by the fire and there's been a number of significant additions to the heritage at risk register.

Nikhil Scott: Yes, that was the stats I think I mentioned earlier. I believe it was six listed buildings that were within the sort of area of the wildfire.

Sally Evans: But the listed buildings in this case actually are crosses or standing stones, not big buildings.

Nikhil Scott: Yes, stretching the definition. Yes, definitely.

Sally Evans: Should we have one more question if we can find one?

Nikhil Scott: There's one question here which I think could link into the work that my colleagues do quite interestingly. Is there any research in the adaptation of heritage assets especially historic water management systems in landscape scale in helping to mitigate the risk of wildfire spread? Historically, canals could be used as stop-lines now have a role in flood alleviation. That is one of the things that my team focuses on. My colleague specifically kind of looks at climate adaptation of heritage assets. It's something that Historic England is actively pursuing with various research projects at the moment. My gut feeling is yes, there there would certainly be a role for that. And I think one of the most interesting things that we do in environmental policy and historic England is think about how have we used the land and heritage assets in days gone by and is that learning useful nowadays and that might involve the historic courses of rivers and how we might need to return to those or it might be historic water management systems which could be used in the events of a wildfire so the answer is yes. I believe there's definitely a role for that and it's something that we're actively building our evidence base on to try and explore that because again it comes back to this idea of heritage being something which is part of this landscape and can be a helpful agent in this process as well. I think that might be all we have.