Former county councillor for Llangollen Stuart Davies (pictured) gives his personal view of the reasons behind mountain fire which has been burning on Llantysilio Mountain for many weeks.
When I
was a lad many years ago it was normal to burn gorse and heather, I used to as
a little boy with my Grandad, he had a hill farm in Cheshire.
Since
then the tree huggers and bunny lovers have taken over.
The
management of places like the Horseshoe Pass has stopped the type of burning we
used to do,
consequently we have the build up of what I call brash and the
undergrowth gets denser.
This
collects year on year and then when a natural fire occurs, instead of it being
a "flash" fire it becomes a deep rooted one that hangs on and on in
the deep undergrowth.
NRW
(National Resources Wales) are the culprits!
They
don't allow anyone to do anything there!
Denbighshire
County Council, when I was a councillor, wanted to do stuff such
as cut the verges and widen them a bit - no, no and no the officers
said.
Farmers
would like to burn as they used to do every year. Controlled burns keep the
rubbish down, gets rid of nasty insects such as ticks and promotes the growth
of tender new shoots which grouse graze on!
I notice
a few weeks in to the burn that NRW was doing its handwringing bit, ooh the
poor black grouse!
Well, if
they did or had allowed more regular controlled burning instead of doing the PC
bit it is my opinion that the fire would have been well out by now!
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