Cairngorms Wildfire Spreads Past Two Miles, Testing Scotland’s New Plan

A wildfire near Ryvoan Bothy in the Cairngorms National Park grew to more than two miles overnight, forcing villages, ski resorts and campsites to evacuate. Firefighters worked through the night to hold the line near Nethy Bridge, and no injuries have been reported.

The blaze is the first major test of a national wildfire strategy Scotland published four months ago, after a record-breaking 2025 fire season. One evacuated resident says his village asked for a local fire plan five years ago and got nothing.

Flames Stretch Past Two Miles Overnight

Police Scotland said emergency services were first alerted to a large fire in the open near Ryvoan Bothy around 11.50am on Wednesday, July 15, 2026. By 9pm that evening the fire had reached more than two kilometres in length, with six fire appliances, a wildfire unit and specialist tactical commanders on scene, according to the Press and Journal.

By Thursday morning it had grown further still, stretching more than two miles, or 3.5 kilometres, across dry heathland. Deputy Assistant Chief Officer Ian McMeekin, of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS), said crews scaled back overnight to monitor conditions in the dark.

“We have been fighting the fire for a period of time now and overnight we still have four appliances in attendance, but we are reassessing the situation this morning,” McMeekin told BBC Radio Scotland’s Breakfast programme. “It is very much an ongoing incident and we expect to be there for the remainder of the day.”

The C7 road, known locally as Ski Road, has been closed. Cairngorm Mountain Resort and Glenmore Lodge, an outdoor activity centre, were both evacuated, along with campsites and the Pine Marten bar in Glenmore, a village that sits alongside Aviemore’s decades-long shift from a quiet Highland stop into one of Scotland’s busiest outdoor tourism hubs. Police have asked anyone who has been walking in the area to check in with family once they are off the hill.

The Risk Window Opened Wednesday and Runs to Monday

The fire broke out as the SFRS and the Scottish Wildfire Forum had already placed the central Highlands, southern Scotland and eastern Scotland under a “very high” wildfire risk warning running from Wednesday until Monday. Temperatures reached 28C around Fort William that day, with dry conditions forecast to continue.

Firefighters were also called to a separate gorse fire the same day at Garry Park Wood in Lochore Meadows Country Park, Fife. The Cairngorms National Park Authority called its own incident “deeply concerning” and linked it to the wider pattern of fires breaking out this week across drier, hotter parts of the country.

That pattern did not start this week. The SFRS issued the year’s first wildfire warning in March, for the north and north east, months before Wednesday’s alert. The service logged 14 separate wildfire warnings in 2025, with the last one landing in October, well outside what used to be the normal season. Research from the James Hutton Institute has also tracked wildfire activity across 442 square kilometres of Scotland’s moorlands over a five-year study period, almost all of it outside the controlled burns land managers use to cut fuel loads.

• No injuries or casualties have been reported by police or the fire service.
• The fire was reported at 11.49am on Wednesday, July 15, near Ryvoan Bothy.
• The C7 Ski Road remains closed, with Glenmore Forest Park and Loch Morlich off limits.

What has not been confirmed yet matters just as much. McMeekin told reporters it was “far too early” to identify a cause. No containment timeline has been given, and fire crews have not said how much of the regenerating Caledonian pine forest above the heathland has burned.

Five Years of Asking for a Fire Plan

Duncan Ferguson lives in Glenmore, a village near Aviemore, and works as operations manager at the Spey Fishery Board. He was evacuated by police on Wednesday afternoon.

He described the fire as heavier than a simple grass blaze. “It’s heathland at the minute, but it’s started to burn in the upper area of the regeneration of the Caledonian pine forest,” he told the Press Association, adding that it would turn serious without a swift response: “It’s going to be bad, it’s going to be major unless they get hold of it.”

Ferguson also pointed to a warning his community raised years before this one.

Five years ago we asked for a fire plan for Glenmore because we knew something like this would happen. Nothing has happened.

That is Ferguson, speaking to BBC Scotland News after he was moved to a nearby campsite, where he found visitors carrying on as normal even as police cars arrived. A band was still playing outside the Pine Marten when he got there, he said, and traffic kept moving up and down the road.

The Strategy Scotland Wrote After Dava Moor

The 2025 Season

The context for Ferguson’s complaint sits in Edinburgh. In March, the Scottish Government and the SFRS published a Strategic Action Plan on Wildfires, written in direct response to what officials called the country’s most severe wildfire season on record.

A wildfire in Scotland is officially classed as any outdoor fire that burns more than 1,000 square metres, a threshold the Dava Moor fire cleared many times over on its way to nearly 10,000 hectares of moorland, peatland and woodland.

What the New Plan Promises

The plan’s own executive summary named Cairngorms National Park directly. It proposed a mountain rescue-style volunteer network of trained wildfire responders, with this park floated as a potential trial site. It also promised new fire prevention byelaws for the park and a review of helicopter access protocols for peak wildfire periods.

None of that was in place in time for Wednesday. The fire that broke out at Ryvoan Bothy this week sits inside the exact park named in the plan as a testing ground, four months before any trial was due to begin.

The Helicopter RSPB Could Not Get

The fire’s southern edge runs along the boundary of Loch Garten Nature Reserve in Abernethy, owned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which sent every staff member on duty to the scene. A spokesperson said the ospreys nesting there, roughly six miles away, are not at risk.

Capercaillie, a large ground-nesting woodland grouse, are a different story. The birds have been spotted near Ryvoan as recently as May, and signs along the walking paths already warn visitors not to approach them. The species went extinct in Britain in the mid-18th century and was reintroduced in Perthshire in 1837; breeding males have climbed 50% since 2020 even as habitat loss, egg predation and collisions with deer fences keep numbers fragile, a recovery effort that follows the park’s own return of beavers after four centuries away.

Colleagues from neighbouring Wildland Ltd and Rothiemurchus Estates joined the response using fogging units mounted on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and water pumps. RSPB Scotland also tried to bring in a private helicopter to assess the fire from the air. None was available. Every one nearby was already committed to fires burning in England.

Free-ranging reindeer that graze the area were let out onto the mountains regardless. A visitor centre that runs guided trips to see the herd said the animals “are not close to the fire and will keep themselves safe.”

Fire Crews Reassess as Risk Runs Through the Weekend

Ross Ewing, director of moorland and strategic projects at Scottish Land & Estates, called the incident “clearly serious and fast-moving” and urged the public to keep roads clear for emergency vehicles. He also asked landowners to ready their own specialist fire equipment, echoing the kind of mutual aid that shaped last year’s response at Dava Moor.

Kevin Dingwall, the SFRS’s wildfire tactical adviser, said warm weather will keep drawing people outdoors through the risk window, and asked them to take a few simple precautions.

• Bring a picnic, not a disposable barbecue.
• Take litter home, especially glass, which can ignite dry grass in direct sun.
• Stub cigarettes out completely before leaving them.
• Call 999 immediately if you spot a large outdoor fire, and give crews the exact location.

“Hot, dry conditions increase the risk of wildfire across Scotland,” Dingwall said. “Even if a warning is not in place where you live, we ask everyone to stay vigilant.” He added that a single spark, in the wrong conditions, is enough to do lasting damage to landscape and wildlife that a wider look at the risk facing historically wetter parts of Britain has also flagged as a growing pattern.

Back in Glenmore, Ferguson’s account of the evacuation captured the gap between the emergency and everyday life around it. Police were moving residents out of their homes. At the campsite where they gathered, people sat drinking coffee, a band played outside the Pine Marten, and traffic kept rolling up and down the same road the fire service was trying to keep clear.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Cairngorms wildfire under control?

Not as of Thursday morning. Four fire appliances remained at the scene overnight, and Ian McMeekin said the SFRS was reassessing the situation and expected crews to be there for the remainder of the day, with additional resources possibly being brought in after that review.

What caused the fire near Ryvoan Bothy?

The cause has not been confirmed. McMeekin called it “far too early” to say, though Scotland’s own Strategic Action Plan on Wildfires notes that human actions, intentional or accidental, are a factor in most cases, alongside the warmer, drier spring and summer conditions driving up fuel loads.

Which roads and areas are closed?

The C7 road, known locally as Ski Road, is shut. Police and the national park have asked the public to avoid Glenmore Forest Park and Loch Morlich entirely while firefighting continues, and to keep the route clear for emergency vehicles.

Is Cairngorms wildlife in danger from the fire?

RSPB Scotland says ospreys around six miles from the blaze are not at risk. Capercaillie, seen near Ryvoan as recently as May, nest on the ground closer to the fire’s path, and free-ranging reindeer have been let onto the hills, with keepers saying the animals will keep clear on their own.

How many wildfires does Scotland typically record in a year?

2025 was the worst on record, with 241 incidents, including the Carrbridge and Dava Moor fire that burned close to 10,000 hectares. A wildfire is officially defined in Scotland as any outdoor fire burning more than 1,000 square metres of land.