Slieve Beagh: Third of conservation site damaged in wildfire

Crews warn visitors to keep away from Langdale Moor fire

BBC News

6 hours ago

BBC News

Crews warn visitors to keep away from Langdale Moor fire

People visiting the scene of a major moorland wildfire to take photos have been asked to stay away, as crews remain at the fire broke out near RAF Fylingdales on Langdale Moor near Pickering, North Yorkshire, last Monday its peak, 19 fire appliances were at the scene and a major incident was declared. North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (NYFRS) urged people not to visit the area where crews were still working, and said the rest of the North York Moors National Park and Dalby Forest remained open. A spokesperson said: "There are reports of people visiting the area of the fire to take photos. We would ask that people don't come to Langdale Moor and Langdale Forest where our crews are working."We remain at the scene of the fire at Langdale Moor. Crews continue to work to damp down and are being supported by partner agencies with putting fire breaks in. "A helicopter is in use again today to drop water." Does controlled moorland burning reduce wildfire risk? There have been reports of smoke drifting as far as Skipton, York and Tadcaster, and people living nearby have been asked to keep windows and doors cause of the fire is not yet Fire Officer Jonathan Dyson thanked everyone who had helped in the effort to put out the fire this week."Our crews, control room staff and officers have worked around the clock this past week to tackle the moorland fire at Langdale," he said."It's been especially hot and tiring work for the crews and officers at the scene."The generosity of communities and businesses through donations, support and well wishes has been truly outstanding."I'm especially grateful to local farmers, gamekeepers and partner agencies who've assisted on the ground and to our neighbouring fire services for providing additional resources." Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

‘Pray for rain': wildfires in Canada are now burning where they never used to

The Guardian

6 hours ago

The Guardian

‘Pray for rain': wildfires in Canada are now burning where they never used to

Road closures, evacuations, travel chaos and stern warnings from officials have all become fixtures of Canada's wildfire season. But as the country goes through its second-worst burn on record, the blazes come with a twist: few are coming from the western provinces, the traditional centre of destruction. Instead, the worst of the fires have been concentrated in the prairie provinces and the Atlantic region, with bone-dry conditions upending how Canada responds to a threat which is only likely to grow as the climate warms. Experts say the shift serves as a stark reminder that the risk of disaster is present across the thickly forested nation. In recent weeks, tens of thousands of people in communities across the country have been evacuated due to the wildfires. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been the worst hit, home to more than 60% of the volume burned in Canada. But the fires have also seized strained resources in Atlantic Canada, where officials in Newfoundland and Labrador are struggling to battle out of control blazes. In response to the crisis, Newfoundland premier John Hogan said on Wednesday morning he would temporarily ban off-road vehicles in forested areas because the province 'simply cannot afford any further risks, given the number of out-of-control wildfires we have'. The ban follows a similar move by Nova Scotia, where a 15 hectare (37 acre) out-of-control fire is burning outside the provincial capital of Halifax. In addition to barring vehicles in wooded areas, Nova Scotia officials also shut down hiking, camping and fishing in forests: a decision reflecting the troubling fact that nearly all fires in the province are started by humans. 'Conditions are really dry, there's no rain in sight, the risk is extremely high in Nova Scotia,' the province's premier Tim Houston told reporters. 'I'm happy to make sure that we're doing everything we can to protect people, to protect property and try to just get through this fire season and really just pray for rain.' Fires have even erupted in Ontario's Kawartha Lakes region, a collection of rural communities less than 100 miles (161km) north of Toronto that are a popular summer destination for residents of Canada's largest city. For a country of sprawling landmass, fires have long been a common feature of the hot spring, summer and fall. But for the last century, a mix of geography, climate and industry meant that the biggest and hottest fires – and the vast majority of destruction – have been concentrated in Canada's western provinces. That changed in 2023 when Canada experienced its worst-ever fire season and the thick haze of smoke blanketed the US. 'We had fire everywhere. We had evacuations everywhere. We had smoke at a scale that was remarkable. And so for the first time, we had a different thought about wildfires as a country. With all of the smoke, it became a global conversation. This year is repeating all of that,' said Paul Kovacs, the executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University. 'This is a national issue. This can show up anywhere.' Kovacs, whose organization focuses largely on preventing structural loss, said more buildings have been destroyed this year compared with 2023, and warned that a majority of the residents of the most fire-prone parts of the country, like British Columbia and Alberta, have not yet taken steps to protect or 'harden' their homes from fire risk. He hopes that a broader national recognition of fire risk, however, spurs people in other parts of the country to reassess how vulnerable their home or business might be to a fast-moving blaze. 'That's the behavioural change we're hoping to see next because there will be many years of fires to come. The size of the burned area will not go back to where things were 25 years ago. This is just our new reality and we need to be prepared. We change in mindset and a recognition that this can, and probably will, happen in so many parts of our country.' Already, nearly 7.5m hectares (18.5m acres) have burned across Canada in 2025, far above the 10-year average. Despite the national threat, there is no 'one-size-fits-all' approach to reducing risk, said Jen Baron, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia's Centre for Wildfire Coexistence. 'British Columbia and Alberta have long been the poster children for this wildfire problem for a long time, but other regions are beginning to experience some of those same challenges. This speaks to the pervasiveness of climate change: even if a location was relatively low fire risk in the past, with the extended droughts that we're seeing, that's no longer the case now and into the future,' she said. 'Even though some parts of the country are having a wet year on average, things across the board are still warmer and drier than they were in the past,' she said. That uncertainty has prompted a multimillion dollar funding effort from the federal government to study risk and adaptation because 'there are very few parts of Canada that would be totally protected from wildfire', said Baron. With an international focus on wildfires, experts like Baron hope the recent years of immense blazes and choking smoke can spur a response that acknowledges the legacy of the forestry industry practices, urban encroachment into the wilderness and the Indigenous stewardship of forests. 'We're just starting to catch up to the scale of the problem. Wildfire is a natural ecological process, but it's become increasingly challenging to manage with changing climatic conditions.' Baron said the 'mild' nature of this year's western fire season also provides a glimpse into the country's future. 'Instead of one big fire year every 15 or 20 years, every year will be big in some part of the country,' she said 'We really don't know exactly how climate change is going to continue. It doesn't drive things in linear ways. And we can't predict where there's going to be a drought next year. But it will be somewhere.'

The Guardian

7 hours ago

The Guardian

‘Pray for rain': wildfires in Canada are now burning where they never used to

Road closures, evacuations, travel chaos and stern warnings from officials have all become fixtures of Canada's wildfire season. But as the country goes through its second-worst burn on record, the blazes come with a twist: few are coming from the western provinces, the traditional centre of destruction. Instead, the worst of the fires have been concentrated in the prairie provinces and the Atlantic region, with bone-dry conditions upending how Canada responds to a threat which is only likely to grow as the climate warms. Experts say the shift serves as a stark reminder that the risk of disaster is present across the thickly forested nation. In recent weeks, tens of thousands of people in communities across the country have been evacuated due to the wildfires. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been the worst hit, home to more than 60% of the volume burned in Canada. But the fires have also seized strained resources in Atlantic Canada, where officials in Newfoundland and Labrador are struggling to battle out of control blazes. In response to the crisis, Newfoundland premier John Hogan said on Wednesday morning he would temporarily ban off-road vehicles in forested areas because the province 'simply cannot afford any further risks, given the number of out-of-control wildfires we have'. The ban follows a similar move by Nova Scotia, where a 15 hectare (37 acre) out-of-control fire is burning outside the provincial capital of Halifax. In addition to barring vehicles in wooded areas, Nova Scotia officials also shut down hiking, camping and fishing in forests: a decision reflecting the troubling fact that nearly all fires in the province are started by humans. 'Conditions are really dry, there's no rain in sight, the risk is extremely high in Nova Scotia,' the province's premier Tim Houston told reporters. 'I'm happy to make sure that we're doing everything we can to protect people, to protect property and try to just get through this fire season and really just pray for rain.' Fires have even erupted in Ontario's Kawartha Lakes region, a collection of rural communities less than 100 miles (161km) north of Toronto that are a popular summer destination for residents of Canada's largest city. For a country of sprawling landmass, fires have long been a common feature of the hot spring, summer and fall. But for the last century, a mix of geography, climate and industry meant that the biggest and hottest fires – and the vast majority of destruction – have been concentrated in Canada's western provinces. That changed in 2023 when Canada experienced its worst-ever fire season and the thick haze of smoke blanketed the US. 'We had fire everywhere. We had evacuations everywhere. We had smoke at a scale that was remarkable. And so for the first time, we had a different thought about wildfires as a country. With all of the smoke, it became a global conversation. This year is repeating all of that,' said Paul Kovacs, the executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University. 'This is a national issue. This can show up anywhere.' Kovacs, whose organization focuses largely on preventing structural loss, said more buildings have been destroyed this year compared with 2023, and warned that a majority of the residents of the most fire-prone parts of the country, like British Columbia and Alberta, have not yet taken steps to protect or 'harden' their homes from fire risk. He hopes that a broader national recognition of fire risk, however, spurs people in other parts of the country to reassess how vulnerable their home or business might be to a fast-moving blaze. 'That's the behavioural change we're hoping to see next because there will be many years of fires to come. The size of the burned area will not go back to where things were 25 years ago. This is just our new reality and we need to be prepared. We change in mindset and a recognition that this can, and probably will, happen in so many parts of our country.' Already, nearly 7.5m hectares (18.5m acres) have burned across Canada in 2025, far above the 10-year average. Despite the national threat, there is no 'one-size-fits-all' approach to reducing risk, said Jen Baron, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia's Centre for Wildfire Coexistence. 'British Columbia and Alberta have long been the poster children for this wildfire problem for a long time, but other regions are beginning to experience some of those same challenges. This speaks to the pervasiveness of climate change: even if a location was relatively low fire risk in the past, with the extended droughts that we're seeing, that's no longer the case now and into the future,' she said. 'Even though some parts of the country are having a wet year on average, things across the board are still warmer and drier than they were in the past,' she said. That uncertainty has prompted a multimillion dollar funding effort from the federal government to study risk and adaptation because 'there are very few parts of Canada that would be totally protected from wildfire', said Baron. With an international focus on wildfires, experts like Baron hope the recent years of immense blazes and choking smoke can spur a response that acknowledges the legacy of the forestry industry practices, urban encroachment into the wilderness and the Indigenous stewardship of forests. 'We're just starting to catch up to the scale of the problem. Wildfire is a natural ecological process, but it's become increasingly challenging to manage with changing climatic conditions.' Baron said the 'mild' nature of this year's western fire season also provides a glimpse into the country's future. 'Instead of one big fire year every 15 or 20 years, every year will be big in some part of the country,' she said 'We really don't know exactly how climate change is going to continue. It doesn't drive things in linear ways. And we can't predict where there's going to be a drought next year. But it will be somewhere.'

Slieve Beagh: Third of conservation site damaged in wildfire

Hashtags

Try Our AI Features

Comments

Related Articles

Crews warn visitors to keep away from Langdale Moor fire

‘Pray for rain': wildfires in Canada are now burning where they never used to

‘Pray for rain': wildfires in Canada are now burning where they never used to

Slieve Beagh: Third of conservation site damaged in wildfire

Hashtags

Try Our AI Features

Comments

Related Articles

Crews warn visitors to keep away from Langdale Moor fire

‘Pray for rain': wildfires in Canada are now burning where they never used to

‘Pray for rain': wildfires in Canada are now burning where they never used to

Get Started Now: Download the App