Royal Holloway University of London / Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society, United Kingdom
Crofters, smallholder upland farmers in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, use fire to maintain common grazing areas for livestock, a practice known as muirburn or falasgair in Gaelic. Archival records show that pastoral fire use has been practiced by peasant farmers in Scotland since at least the Medieval period. Yet fire use has varied with political, ecological, economic, and social context, and has certainly changed in living memory. Based on research interviews with crofters in Sutherland, Skye, and Lochaber, I explore some of the challenges that crofters face in maintaining controlled, collective, fire use on common grazing areas in the 21st century. These include high fuel loads due to declining stocking levels (especially of cattle), decline and aging of the crofting population, the inflexibility of 21st century life and work, risk to plantations and other assets in the landscape, and poor public awareness of the distinction between controlled burning and wildfire. Alongside these drivers, the national muirburn regulations have recently been revised in ways that could make much fire use by crofters illegal. In the context of a changing climate, we need to ask whether wildfire risk might be exacerbated by the loss of controlled burning and the fire knowledge held by crofters. If so, could well-managed muirburn, or alternative fuel management techniques like grazing by cattle, be better supported?
