The Yorkshire Moors are burning – the myth of ‘wild’ fires & kindling our futures

It began with smoke on the horizon. I’d spent hours mesmerised by the gannets at Bempton Cliffs and got to the point where I had to leave to continue my journey to Scotland. As I turned to head back along the cliffs, my heart sank. I said out loud to myself, “Hell, I think the Yorkshire moors are burning.” The contrast of awe at these amazing birds, rapidly giving way to a rising sense of grief and concern for my onward journey.

I reached out to a friend in Scarborough and she said it had started a couple of days ago but thought it was under control. Sadly, everything about the weather changed that afternoon. The wind changed direction and was easily pushing 30mph and the moorland fire had taken hold once more.

I could see from Google Maps roughly where the burning on the Yorkshire moors was and thought my coastal route up the A171 looked fine. But that wasn’t how things were set to unfold.

And so, I left Bempton Cliffs, driving north towards these ominous skies. What should have been a four-hour drive turned into an 8.5-hour nightmare. I finally arrived in Scotland at 1:11am.

It felt eerie. Kindling Futures, one of the collections in Islandness — my solo exhibition in partnership with the National Trust at Scotney Castle — explores the global impact of wildfires and how interconnected we all are with the forces that spark and spread them. I hoped never to experience one close up. Then I saw the Yorkshire Moors burning.

As I tried to navigate around the fire, the impact imprinted on my heart. Thick smoke covered the landscape, rolling towards the sea. The scale of it. The speed of it. The helplessness of it.

And the knowing, deep in my bones, that this was not an isolated incident.

This was not wild. This was completely human-caused.

By the time I reached Scarborough, a second fire, in addition to the burning Yorkshire Moors had sparked beside the A171. I could see the smoke hugging the road and messaged a friend who lived nearby. Fifteen minutes later, she told me the fire had jumped the road and it was now closed. What followed was the most stressful part of the drive: 3 or 4 hours of trying, failing, and trying again to navigate my way north.

I decided to try and stay coastal side of the fires as the first one looked quite near the other main road and that route was quite a way out of my natural route. My attempts at navigating on country roads were thwarted, roads marked on Google Maps actually turned into bridleways or footpaths. And of course being in more remote spots, signal kept dropping to be able to see other routes.

Eventually, I got back to signal and could see that Google had picked up the road closure due to the fire, so I typed my final Scottish destination back in, it said it picked up the closure and a route that looked to dog-leg around it was mapped out, so off I went.

Frustratingly, I later learned it had guided me along a road that took me south of the police cordon and then, unknowingly, delivered me right into the fire zone. Not knowing the area, I felt quite assured by being in a row of maybe 6-8 other cars, but as I turned a corner and was suddenly met with fire crews on the ground. GoogleMaps had delivered me directly to the fire coming from the burning Yorkshire Moors! Though the flames were extinguished on the surface, the peat was burning underground and the scorched landscape was billowing smoking.

I joined a small queue of cars had built up. There was an ambulance behind me that didn’t know the road was closed either. Volunteers in high-vis jackets were amazing support, helping re-route traffic. They gasped when I said I was trying to get to Scotland and advised that I head back towards Scarborough, inland through Pickering and then I should pick up a route north.

I turned around and headed down the road and it was only then that I came across the Police cordon and I pulled into a lay-by and checked the map could see exactly what my GoogleMaps had done, wanting to make sure that it didn’t do the same again!

I’d been driving for hours at this point, almost as long as my overall journey to Scotland, so I pulled the van into a another lay-by and made a cup of tea and had a sandwich before kicking off the next part of the journey to Pickering. Only then, hours after leaving Bempton, did I finally manage to turn north and begin what felt like the real journey to Scotland.

I tried everything I could to reroute safely, but driving solo in a landscape I didn’t know and relying on digital maps, reminded me just how vulnerable we are when systems fail. The illusion of control slips quickly when you’re met with fire on the road ahead.

Not wild fires, but human ones

We need to change the language.

The term wildfire implies something natural, unpredictable, even elemental — as if it belongs to nature’s untamed side. But these fires are not wild. They are entirely human. The conditions that create them are no mystery. They are the outcome of burning fossil fuels, destroying ecosystems and ignoring decades of scientific warning.

Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve pumped billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This trapped heat has disrupted Earth’s delicate systems. The UK, once known for its mild, damp summers, is now facing hotter, longer, drier spells. Heatwaves are no longer rare. We were in the middle of our fourth heatwave of summer 2025 when this fire started. The land, in drought conditions, had become a tinderbox.

These aren’t freak events. They are foreseeable consequences.

And often, it’s human carelessness that lights the match. Disposable barbecues. Campfires. Cigarettes. Intentions may not be malicious, but when the earth is this dry, even a small oversight can escalate into disaster.

To call them wildfires is to ignore our part in the story.

They are not wild in the sense of untamed nature. They are human fires, sparked by inaction and fuelled by disconnection. A symptom of a much deeper crisis. Our collective failure to listen to the messages that nature has so clearly been screaming at us.

So when we talk about wildfires, we must also talk about industrialisation, urban expansion, climate policy and disconnection.

From smoke to story: kindling futures

As a photographer who tells stories of the wild, I’ve witnessed climate change from many angles. I’ve seen plastic entangling humpback whales and documented gannets nesting in ghost fishing gear. I’ve felt the grief of receding glaciers and the stillness of warming seas where invasive species disrupt entire ecosystems.

That smoke rising from the burning Yorkshire moors echoed scenes I’d already captured in Kindling Futures — a photo collection within Islandness. It explores the rise of wildfires globally and how they’re now casting smoke across UK skies. I had hoped these moments wouldn’t arrive here. But they have.

In 2020, I saw the skies shift above Kent as smoke from California crossed the Atlantic.

In 2024, I watched the sun dim behind a haze of Canadian wildfire smoke. Birdsong stopped. Light faltered. The sun set into a smoky sky, above the horizon, and the air grew strangely still.

Those moments felt surreal, but distant. This one was different. This one was here.

And that is the point. These fires are no longer distant headlines from another continent. They are no longer confined to the imagined elsewhere that lets people dissociate, excusing inaction through geography. They are happening right here, in the UK. On Yorkshire Moors we thought were too wet to burn. In places we believed were safe. But they’re not. Nowhere is.

The illusion of immunity is gone. The crisis is on our doorstep. On our watch.

We are living inside the story.

We must change the narrative

We live on islands on a blue planet suspended in space. But nothing we do happens in isolation. From the choices we make on the shoreline to the smoke that cloaks our skies, every action ripples outward.

We need to change how we talk about fire.

We need to see the irony of calling them wildfires when we’re the ones fuelling the flames. Through our consumption, our policies, our silence.

We need to grieve, yes, but also act. Because this will keep happening. Again and again. Until we wake up to the truth.

Philosophical fire: what it reveals

These fires illuminate truths. They strip away the illusion that we are observers, separate from what we see. They show us that we are both the cause and the casualty.

With searing clarity, they blur the boundary between human-made and natural. They collapse the divide we try so hard to hold onto. When smoke blots out the sun, we realise: we are not separate from nature. We are not bigger than the (eco)system. We are nature, as part of nature.

So if the land burns, it is our hands that lit it. If the smoke fills the sky, it is our story being written in the ash.

Wildfires aren’t random acts of nature

Wildfires don’t just happen. They are the result of human activity — both direct and indirect. These are not isolated incidents, but signals in a feedback loop, where our choices reshape the very fabric of nature into something more flammable, more fragile.

The land burns not only because it is dry, but because we have made it so.

To speak of wildfires without naming this interconnectedness is to miss the deeper truth: we are not separate from the systems we’re destabilising. Fires are no longer purely natural disasters. They are reflections of imbalance. Of a planet stretched. Of a society unmoored from stewardship.

And so, to witness these fires, to photograph the Yorkshire Moors burning, to drive through them, to breathe their smoke, is to feel the weight of responsibility. Not just to understand the causes, but to change the conditions that keep making them inevitable.

They are symptoms of our disconnection and a planet under pressure.

What causes wildfires?

• Intentional and negligent actions
  Most fires start with people. Discarded cigarettes, unattended campfires, poorly managed garden waste, fireworks, even deliberate arson. In dry conditions, one careless spark can unleash catastrophe. These aren’t accidents of nature, they’re human oversights with ecological consequences.
• Technological failures
  Faulty power lines and electrical infrastructure are another ignition source. As temperatures rise and vegetation dries out, even a small fault can trigger fire across vulnerable landscapes.
• Climate change
  This is the slow-burning match we’ve been striking for decades. Our addiction to fossil fuels has destabilised Earth’s systems. Longer heatwaves, less rainfall, and more frequent droughts dry the land and stress ecosystems, leaving them brittle and burn-ready.
• Fuel buildup
  A century of fire suppression has created unnatural fuel loads in forests and moorlands. Without low-intensity burns or natural clearing cycles, dead wood and dry vegetation accumulate, priming the land for extreme fires once conditions align.
• Interconnectedness of human activity and nature
  We don’t just light the match, we create the conditions for ignition. Our industries, infrastructures and lifestyles are transforming ecosystems into flammable environments.
• The blurred boundary between natural and human disaster
  There is no clean line anymore. What we once labelled as freak weather or wildfire season is now the result of human-made systems failing to live in balance with the earth.
• Collective responsibility
  This isn’t about blaming individuals. It’s about recognising that we are all part of a larger story. A cycle that only breaks when we shift — from extraction to restoration, from convenience to care, from detachment to belonging.
• Systemic vulnerability
  These fires don’t just destroy habitats. They expose how fragile our systems are. Infrastructure, health, safety — all at risk. Climate breakdown isn’t a distant threat. It’s a present-tense vulnerability.

We must listen now, not later

There is no more time for poetic metaphors or vague climate pledges.

The Yorkshire Moors are not hypothetical. The coastlines are not immune. Nature is not a distant theatre in which our dramas play out.

Nature is the stage, the script and the audience.

What will it take for us to wake up? Not beauty, but burning.

Nature doesn’t need our pity. She needs our action.

What we can do

• Call it what it is: These are not wildfires. They are human-caused ecological collapse.
• Hold governments accountable: Push for stronger climate action, wildfire prevention and ecosystem restoration.
• Support peatland restoration and moorland conservation: These landscapes store vast carbon, protect biodiversity and regulate climate.
• Donate to local conservation groups: They are on the frontlines, responding to the impact of these fires on nature and wildlife.
• Speak the truth: If we are able to use our voice to shape the narratives and challenge the harmful systems and structures, then we must.

The fight continues: fire crews, fragile moorland and the weight of climate collapse

As I finish writing this, the fire that had been largely contained has surged once more, reignited by wind and heat, sweeping across the Yorkshire Moors burning with renewed force. It continues to burn. My heart is with those working tirelessly to fight it. The firefighters, volunteers and emergency teams who are showing up, hour after hour, to hold the line in the face of something that feels increasingly unstoppable.

But most of all, my heart breaks for the land itself. For the precious moorland scorched to a cinder. For the wildlife caught in the flames. The ground that smoulders long after the fire is out, peat burning in deep layers, releasing the ancient carbon it once locked safely away. These ecosystems take decades – centuries – to recover, if they ever can.

This is the reality of climate breakdown. You don’t know when it will cross your path. When a journey becomes an unexpected detour into disaster. When the air turns thick with smoke and the land you love is changed beyond recognition. These catastrophes are no longer distant, no longer rare. They are human-made, and they are here.

We are living inside the story now. The only question is how we respond.

→ Read: How Canadian wildfires are impacting UK skies.