Farmer tells of watching her ‘home’ burn as restored peatland helped halt Elan Valley wildfire

Debs Luxon

Sorcha Lewis watched the wildfire descend from the uplands to the back of her house.

The fire at the end of April was on an unprecedented scale, visible from space, tearing through 8,000 hectares of Elan Valley’s rare and delicate natural habitats in seven days, burning the equivalent of more than 11,000 football pitches.

The cattle and sheep farmer said she knew the fire would be big, but the scale of the fire was “frightening”, hearing the “roar” of the flames “like a wave”.

Sorcha became “emotional” watching the land she calls home burn around her, but there was one distinct area that the wildfire didn’t touch.

Drone footage shows a striking line from the black burnt land and a blush of green and blue showing the pools of watery peat.

This is one of the areas where, only 18 months ago, peatland rewetting began.

The 50-year-old mum of two said: “It shows the devastation of the wildfire, but also the potential to avoid that dramatic, frightening, landscape-scale wildfire.

“Restoring peatland makes the land more resilient to climate factors – when it rains too much, it soaks it up. When you’ve got wildfires, it can stop the fire’s movement by just being damper ground.
“This is why, as farmers, we need to get into the mindset of making the landscape resilient, because if it’s resilient for nature, it’s resilient for farming.”

Peatland rewetting involves creating small dams to encourage water to collect, rewetting the once wet peat, allowing plants like moss to recover, and creating a “sink” for water in the uplands of the 70 sq mi estate.

Peatland is made of partially decomposed plants that have accumulated in waterlogged conditions, offering a unique habitat for an incredible range of rare plants and wildlife.

When healthy, peat is a precious carbon sink, so significant in fact that peatland is sometimes referred to as the world’s air-conditioners, with undamaged peat holding thousands of years’ worth of carbon.
Damaged peat, meanwhile, releases carbon back into the atmosphere and when fire catches, can burn for months underground.

Wales’ peatland is significant, covering just 4.3% of Wales (90,000 hectares) but holding 30% of the country’s land-based carbon, but 90% of the peat is damaged, drained for agriculture and forestry or harvested to make compost.

Work to restore and protect it is only just beginning – the Elan Valley Trust started their work five years ago with support from Natural Resources Wales (NRW), restoring 180 hectares of the estate across five priority sites.

The Estate recognised those areas as being most resilient against April’s fire.

In 2020 NRW also began restoration work on 3,600 hectares of peatland, and is now aiming to begin restoration on 1,800 hectares more each year.

Sorcha, whose family has been on her farm for three generations, is part of a growing movement of farmers working to restore their peatland, using wool from her own sheep as repair materials.

She is calling for incentives for farmers and landowners to restore their peatland: “Hopefully, after this wildfire, it’ll give us some leverage for the practical conversations about how we can stop it at that level again.

“Living within the wall of the fire, we don’t want to see a fire like that ever again.

“As farmers, we want to leave something behind when we finish.

“This feels like a positive in a world that sometimes feels quite negative.”

Wildfires are getting worse in Wales. Sorcha’s family can’t remember the last time they saw a fire in the Valley, but 2018, 2025, and now 2026 are examples of an increasing trend of wildfires spreading throughout the country.

Sorcha, like other tenant farmers in the Elan Valley, had warned that the next wildfire would be big due to the dry weather, high winds, and the increase in native molinia caerulea or ‘purple moor grass’ which, highly flammable and encouraged by previous wildfires, is increasingly dominant in the landscape.

Peatland rewetting isn’t a one-strike solution for wildfires – some parts of the Valley affected don’t have peat, and the increasing molinia “fuel load” still needs addressing.

Solutions being explored include active grazing and mowing fire breaks into the landscape.

Restoration

The Elan Valley Trust plan to expand their peatland restoration work, and is exploring other means to protect the landscape from devastating fires, with a spokesperson adding: “There are many factors which play a role in how and where wildfires spread, therefore the Trust is working with organisations and the local community to consider a holistic approach to reducing the risk.

“We are also hoping to raise public awareness of the human impact of litter, driving off the legal routes and barbecues/fires – all of which present a fire risk.”

Andrew Wright, Chair of the Wales Wildfire Board from NRW, acknowledged peatland restoration as a “key part” of addressing the growing fire risk: “We’ve seen from previous wildfires how healthy, wet peatland can stall the spread of fire and provide shelter for escaping wildlife.

“By restoring dry, degraded peatland and enabling native vegetation such as sphagnum moss to flourish, we can help create landscapes that are naturally more resilient to fire.”

Climate impacts

It comes as a new report from the UK’s advisers on climate change this week revealed the UK is not ready for the climate impacts forecast if global heating continues.

The independent Climate Change Committee is calling for governments to begin adaptations to climate change now, but for it to be “done properly”.

The citizens panel revealed that its top concerns were flooding, heat, and drought, with a preference for solutions that have co-benefits, including nature-based solutions such as peatland restoration, which benefits nature, climate, and residents protected from flood and fire risk.