‘Absolutely foreseeable’ that wildfires will affect communities, MSPs warned

It is “absolutely foreseeable” that wildfires will start to affect Scottish communities, MSPs have heard.

Holyrood’s Rural Affairs and Islands Committee took evidence on Wednesday from various organisations dealing with the increasing risk of wildfires.

It came after Scotland saw the largest wildfires in living memory last summer.

Jon Henderson, assistant chief officer and director of prevention at the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS), said: “It is absolutely foreseeable that wildfires will start to interact with communities more than they do at present.”

The Scottish Government hosted a special summit in October to consider how best to respond to wildfires, and it found strong support for a fire warning system.

Mr Henderson continued: “It’s not just having a system that can predict the wildfire or say that wildfire’s here and put out a message. It’s the community’s understanding what to do when they receive that message and what action needs to be taken, by which individuals at which points, and that’s why we’re looking to exercise exactly that very, very shortly.”

Widespread wildfires hit the Carrbridge and Dava areas of northern Scotland in June and early July 2025. When combined, the fires became the largest such event in Scotland’s history, burning more than 11,000 hectares of moorland and forestry.

Calum Kippen, of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, said there are villages in the Highlands which are “in imminent danger from wildfire”.

He continued: “The Carrbridge fire could easily have ended up in Grantown-on-Spey. But the other thing that we have to consider with these large-scale wildfires is actually public health from smoke. It’s something that we don’t address, and it’s something that we really have to pay attention to, it’s not just about flames.

“Some of the groups in the Highlands, village groups, resilience groups, have been in touch and they’ve had people trained… so if there is any infrastructure within a village… they could protect until emergency services arrived. People are taking it upon themselves to actually do some good work.”

MSPs heard concerns that there is currently a reliance on voluntary assistance to control wildfires.

Grant Moir, chief executive of Cairngorms National Park Authority, said: “I suppose there’s things that we need to have a think about. Certainly we are thinking about, both at a national level and others, is that at the moment there is a reliance on voluntary help to come in across a lot of these things to make that happen.

“From estates across the country and farmers as well and others who get involved in terms of putting fires out. Without that level of resource that sits alongside the SFRS side of things, then we would not be able to deal with the wildfires we have.”