UK's rarest wildlife being 'torched alive' and pushed to brink by wildfires (2025)

As wildfires rage across the UK, rare wildlife species, including golden plovers and water voles, are bieng "torched alive" as habitats burn, and experts warn it's Britain's worst year yet

Britain’s most endangered animals are being “torched alive” in a horrifying wildfire epidemic sweeping across the country, and conservationists are warning the crisis could drive some species straight into extinction.

Birds like the hen harrier and the elusive golden plover, as well as the rapidly vanishing water vole, now officially the UK’s fastest-declining mammal, are among the worst affected. The National Trust has described the unfolding disaster as “the worst year ever for these human-caused fires across the country.”

Ongoing blazes at Abergwesyn common in Powys, Wales, are believed to have destroyed “the last remaining” breeding habitat for golden plovers in the area, a devastating blow to one of Britain’s most beautiful upland birds.

And it’s not just one patch of land, the scale of destruction is jaw-dropping. Already in 2025, 110 square miles of land, bigger than Birmingham, has gone up in flames.

In Wales alone, fire crews have been called to nearly 1,400 wildfires, sparking pleas from emergency services for the public to “act responsibly” and report any suspicious activity.

Ben McCarthy, head of nature conservation at the National Trust, said: “We're extremely worried, this is looking like it's going to be the worst year for seeing our wildlife going up in flames.”

Experts say a combination of record dry spells, scorching March temperatures, and a build-up of vegetation from a quiet fire season last year has created a dangerous cocktail for disaster.

In Wales, a rare Celtic rainforest at Allt Boeth near Aberystwyth, a habitat more threatened than the Amazon, has been scorched, taking out protected bluebells and irreplaceable lichen and fungi.

In West Yorkshire’s Marsden Moor, thousands of newly planted trees have also succumbed to fire, while in Northern Ireland’s Mourne Mountains, reptiles and invertebrates have been “simply torched alive”.

McCarthy said: “That then cascades through the food web because without the invertebrates you don't get the birds who are reliant on them for food.”

Charities are demanding more government support for upland farmers and land managers to restore peat bogs which can help prevent fires and store climate-warming carbon.

And the plight of the water vole, once a common sight across the UK, is now reaching a critical point.

Rob Parry of the Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru (INCC) said: “They’re the fastest-declining mammal ever. Their last foothold [in Wales] is in the uplands so when those sites are burned it is awful for that particular population, but from a UK point of view we are one step closer to the extinction of an entire species.”

The INCC is also closely watching five breeding pairs of barn owls in the Amman Valley — their survival now at risk.

Parry continued: “A few weeks ago they had all of this area to find food for their chicks and suddenly they don't have that any more. I don't know how they are going to cope. A wildfire just makes that habitat disappear overnight.

“We're one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and wildfires every spring at the worst possible time is a burden that wildlife and the environment just can't cope with.”