She said: “You’ve got your full firefighting kits, you’ve got all your tools, you’re carrying water and you’re trying to put out flaming moorland.
“It’s really hot, really hard work, you get really dirty, but also you feel like you’re doing good work and really helping the environment.
“You get competing emotions, you’re frustrated that the fires happen, really sad to see the devastation, there should be heather and shrubs and grass and bilberries, you can walk past a nest of eggs that have been completely burnt out.
“But there’s a real sense of camaraderie. We’re a very small cog in a massive firefighting machine, everyone is working really hard in hard conditions.”
The fire can be devastating for wildlife. The flames destroy nests, kill fledglings, mammals, and insects unable to escape the fast-moving flames.
Dr Kirsten Lees added: “It’s really upsetting to see the impact that it’s having on the vegetation, the plants and the wildlife.
“This is going to have a really, really devastating impact on the wildlife particularly our ground nesting birds so curlews, skylarks… things like that are really vulnerable to wildfires because they nest literally on the ground – they can’t escape the flames so their chicks, their eggs, particularly late spring, early summer, they’re really vulnerable.”
