Cairngorms Wildfire Hotspots Persist a Year After Scotland’s Record Blaze

Smoke is still rising from the ground in the Cairngorms, a week after flames tore across 10 square kilometres of Highland moorland and pine forest. Firefighters say they have surrounded the blaze near Ryvoan Bothy. They have not put it out.

This is the second time in barely thirteen months that a wildfire in this stretch of the Highlands has been called one of the worst Scotland has ever recorded. The first, at Carrbridge and Dava Moor last summer, released more carbon from ancient peat than any UK blaze measured in at least two decades.

A Week On, the Ground Still Smoulders

The fire broke out around 11.50am on Wednesday, 15 July, after smoke was spotted near Ryvoan Bothy on the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Scotland’s Abernethy Estate, south of Nethy Bridge. Within hours it had grown wide enough to force evacuations across Glenmore and threaten Aviemore.

By Sunday, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said the blaze was largely surrounded. It stopped short of calling it out. Helicopter water-bombing operations ran into a fifth consecutive day, backed by six fire engines, two all-terrain vehicles and a specialist Wildfire Support Unit drawing water from Loch Morlich.

Assistant chief officer Jon Henderson said crews had worked tirelessly in challenging conditions, including steep and often inaccessible terrain, supported by a robust tactical plan. He said their work with landowners and partner agencies to build fire breaks had limited further damage and protected surrounding infrastructure.

“Although we have made substantial progress, this remains a live operational incident and firefighters will remain in attendance until the area is safe,” Henderson said. The fire service still describes “significant hotspots” across what it calls a large and complex landscape, and the blaze is already being called the first real test of Scotland’s new wildfire strategy, published only months before this fire started.

This Corner of the Highlands Burned Last Summer Too

Strip away the current fire’s location and the story reads like a rerun. Last year, wildfires at Carrbridge and Dava Moor, roughly a dozen miles from Ryvoan Bothy, burned for days through the same kind of heather moorland and Caledonian pine.

Scottish Land and Estates, a body representing landowners, estimated those fires affected 29,225 acres (11,827 hectares), almost twelve times the area burned so far this year. The Carrbridge blaze alone reignited repeatedly over 11 days before crews finally extinguished it.

Colin McClean, a land manager with the Cairngorms National Park Authority who helped fight last year’s fires, did not mince words afterward.

This is the biggest wildfire that has been recorded in living memory in Scotland.

He said curlew and grouse chicks, along with hares, would have died in numbers because they could not escape the flames. A Freedom of Information request obtained by the Scottish Conservatives found the number of days Scotland spent under a wildfire warning grew from one in 2020 to 14 in 2025, with “extreme” warnings rising from zero to nine over the same stretch.

Finlay Carson, the party’s rural affairs spokesperson at Holyrood, said more extreme wildfires are going to become even more common in Scotland in the coming years.

Why Does Peat Keep Reigniting Across the Highlands?

Peat looks spent once the flames move on: black, cold, seemingly out. Underneath, it can hold enough heat to reignite days later, and when it burns it releases carbon that took centuries to lock away.

A study in Nature Geoscience examined last year’s Dava Moor fire and called it the UK’s largest wildfire in at least 20 years, twice the size of the next-largest blaze in two decades. Researchers said the fire emitted an estimated 38,600 tonnes of carbon from burning peat alone, with a plausible range up to 119,000 tonnes.

• 38,600 tonnes of carbon were released by the 2025 Dava Moor fire, according to the peer-reviewed estimate, with peat combustion responsible for nearly all of it.
• 85% of that fire’s total emissions came from the soil itself catching fire, not surface heather or trees.
• 90% of the UK’s annual fire-driven carbon emissions since 2001 have come from peatland fires, even though peat makes up only a quarter of the land that burns each year.
• 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide are pulled out of the atmosphere every year by Britain’s peatlands when they stay wet and healthy.

University of Cambridge researchers behind that second figure found peat fires drive up to 90% of UK fire carbon emissions since 2001, and that the country’s wildfire season has stretched from as little as one month a year in the early 2010s to as much as nine months more recently. Scotland alone now accounts for almost half of all UK wildfires, the researchers found.

The Muirburn Law That Still Hasn’t Passed

Scotland has a legal tool aimed at exactly this problem, and it is still not finished. In November 2023, the Scottish Parliament agreed the general principles of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) bill, which would require licences for burning moorland and restrict burning on peatland altogether.

About 40% of muirburn, the practice of deliberately burning heather to encourage new grass growth, happens on carbon-rich peatland across the UK. Landowners argue controlled burning reduces the fuel available for wildfires; researchers studying the Cairngorms counter that it also dries out peat that would otherwise resist burning.

The park’s own climate plan rests partly on restoring 38,000 hectares of degraded peatland by 2045, alongside expanding woodland across roughly 8% of the national park, in pursuit of a net zero target for the region. Two record-scale fires in thirteen months make that target harder to hit, whichever way the muirburn argument eventually settles. Abernethy Forest, where this year’s fire broke out, is also the last refuge of one of Scotland’s rarest birds, adding another species to the list of what is at stake when this landscape burns.

Cairngorm Mountain Stays Shut Through Its Busiest Week

For Cairngorm Mountain, the timing could hardly be worse. Mid-July is normally the resort’s busiest stretch of summer, and instead its car parks sit empty under smoke.

Flames reached the Coire na Ciste car park, usually packed with motorhomes at this time of year. Chief executive Mike Gifford said the smoke blowing over the ski road meant the resort would not open until it clears, adding that it is not safe and not pleasant to be up there in the smoke. He has given no reopening date, though the resort has said guests with existing bookings will get a full refund once staff are allowed back on site.

• The Cairngorm Ski Road (C7) at Coylumbridge, closed to all vehicles
• Glenmore Forest Park and Loch Morlich, off limits to walkers and visitors
• Cairngorm Mountain Resort, including the Coire na Ciste car park reached by flames
• Mar Lodge Estate car parks at Linn of Dee and Linn of Quoich, closed as a precaution
• Glenmore Campsite and other local sites, evacuated since the first day

Mar Lodge Estate, at 9,340 hectares the UK’s largest National Trust for Scotland property, shut its own car parks at Linn of Dee and Linn of Quoich as a precaution, even though the fire itself stayed several miles away. Gifford said reopening now depends on the weather and on how crews get on with the helicopters, a resource that was itself in short supply on the fire’s first night, after a first request for aircraft was turned down for lack of availability.

Crews Remain Until the Land Is Declared Safe

Scottish Government minister Neil Gray called the fire “contained” on Thursday, a description that drew pushback from community leaders, landowners and gamekeepers who said the blaze was still very much alive. Officials since have been careful to draw a line between contained and extinguished.

First Minister John Swinney visited the scene and met local business and community leaders, including Gifford, near Loch Morlich. He praised what he called a combined effort led by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, involving land managers, the RSPB, the Cairngorms National Park and Forestry and Land Scotland.

“It’s got to be a combined effort to make sure that we have the skills, the expertise and the resources to make sure such circumstances can be tackled and the great natural beauty of Scotland protected,” Swinney said. Henderson added a warning that applies well beyond this one fire: the conditions that contribute to wildfires remain present across large parts of Scotland, and it takes only a small spark near dry vegetation to start one that spreads fast. Fire crews are staying at Glenmore until the ground itself is declared safe.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the size of the 2026 Cairngorms fire compare with 2025’s record Highland blaze?

This year’s fire has burned about 1,000 hectares (10 square kilometres), against the 11,827 hectares that Scottish Land and Estates says burned at Carrbridge and Dava Moor last year, nearly twelve times as much land. Despite that gap, this year’s operation still needed more than 100 firefighters and a faster helicopter response than crews had in 2025.

Is Cairngorm Mountain resort open to visitors?

No. The resort has been closed since the fire’s first day, with no reopening date set as of this week. Management has said guests holding existing bookings will receive a full refund once staff are permitted back on site.

What is muirburn and how is Scotland trying to regulate it?

Muirburn is the deliberate, controlled burning of heather moorland to encourage fresh grass growth for grouse and grazing livestock. Scotland’s parliament agreed the outline of a licensing bill for the practice in November 2023, and it is still working through Holyrood; England already requires a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs licence for burning on protected peatland.

Has anyone been injured fighting the Cairngorms wildfires?

No injuries have been reported in either this year’s fire or last year’s Carrbridge and Dava Moor blazes. The 2025 fires were feared to have killed large numbers of wild animals, including curlew and grouse chicks and hares, that could not outrun the flames.

What caused the Cairngorms wildfire?

The cause has not been confirmed. Henderson has said the cause of both this year’s and last year’s fires remains unknown, with crews focused on containing and extinguishing the flames before any formal investigation can begin.