A cigarette butt is suspected to have caused a forest fire that is believed to have killed thousands of young trees.
Nests and charred wood have been found after flames ripped through thousands of trees in Harrow Hill in the Forest of Dean following a “short hot spell” in May.
Leoni Dawson, community ranger for Forestry England, said they were worried “this whole place is dead and gone”.
It is thought no deer or boar were harmed due to a deer fence enclosing the area, but concerns remain for insects, reptiles, small mammals and bird nests.
It has been estimated that there are approximately 3 billion trees in the UK in total. The UK has been assessed to be one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. Any fire that consumed ‘many billions’ of trees in the UK, would leave no trees left at all.
This is a local new story - local to the forest of Dean. It is unusual, however, in that it was a fire that affected (relatively recently planted) woodland at all. Typically in the UK, native woodland is a mixture of broadleaf species - pretty resistant to burning compared to conifers - and are often too wet to burn at all anyway. Even significant forest fires in the Forestry Commission’s extensive conifer plantations are uncommon.
We do have much larger wildfires than this in the UK - but they are typically heathland or moorland fires, not in wooded areas. Species such as gorse and heather, which tend to dominate on heathland, are adapted to periodic fires and will recover relatively quickly. The main issues with those - as is mentioned with this incident - is death of the fauna in the area.