Way Down South – United Kingdom Provides Wildfire Training And Equipment To Falkland Islands

BY ROB GAZZARD

The Falkland Islands are a British Oversea Territory lying deep in the South Atlantic, just 427 miles from Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. Along the 52nd parallel, Falkland Islands residents face fierce Southern Ocean storms, powerful winds, and increasingly, wildfire. As part of my work with the United Kingdom Department for Environment, Food, & Rural Affairs (Defra), I collaborated with the Falkland Islands government to develop and implement a programme to understand the wildfire challenge on the islands. This was necessary as the Falkland Islands – an archipelago the size of Northern Ireland with a civilian population more than 3,500 – is mostly covered in shallow and deep peat that stores millions of tonnes of carbon and has experienced an increasing number of wildfire incidents due to drying conditions from climate change.

Defra’s involvement began in 2022. After several months of video conferences that shrunk the globe and taught us about the challenges faced across the Falkland Islands government environment and its agricultural and fire departments, a deployment programme was agreed upon and funded by Defra. The programme sought to deliver three objectives. Firstly, develop a co-designed programme of accredited and awareness level training to improve wildfire resilience in terms of prevention and response. Secondly, to understand the present challenge of land management and changes in habitats. Finally, to trial new wildfire suppression equipment provided to the Falkland Islands Fire and Rescue Service (FIFRS), by Defra to enhance firefighters’ already impressive skills, increase capabilities, and provide training to use the equipment safely and effectively.

Working with Andy Elliott (@WildfireTaC), the Forestry Commission’s contractor and co-creator of our vegetation fire training, we developed, in advance, a series of awareness development presentations and possible workshops, as well as training manuals. These are based on the United Kingdom’s first accredited training for wildfire incidents and prescribed fire operations.

After travelling 19 hours to the Falkland Islands – from RAF Brize Norton in England and briefly stopping at Cape Verde off the coast of Senegal in West Africa to refuel – we arrived to the islands’ summer of blue skies, sunshine and little of the powerful winds that typically buffet the islands. Our arrival was at Mount Pleasant Complex, a large military base that is home to several thousand personnel on East Falkland. After being met by our host at the FIFRS, we were taken to our hotel on a road along the rugged eastern coastline to the City of Stanley, the home of 95 per cent of the 3,500 civilian Falkland Islanders, to recover from the flight.

Over the next few weeks, we were orientated around East and West Falklands to learn about landscapes and habitats, as well as the land management practices that sustain some of the islanders. It became very clear that the islands were becoming extremely dry, that rainfall was significantly decreasing, and many of the thousands of ponds scattered across the island were now completed empty. The 500,000 sheep grazing the islands in farm settlements were additionally impacting the limited vegetation species types.

Wildfire suppression efforts outside of Stanley (which is known as the camp), are extremely difficult given that surrounding fires could not be addressed immediately and sometimes several days after ignition, resulting in ground fires deep in the peat; this limits the tactics available to the FIFRS, despite their extreme hard work. Whilst attending a visit to inspect a recent wildfire, we came across an area still alight. This provided an excellent opportunity to demonstrate all the wildfire suppression equipment we planned to trial in front of our hosts, showing them the safe and effective techniques that can be used.

We also undertook a visit to one of the Falklands most westerly islands, Weddle, which is the size of a small county back in the U.K., using the local taxi service – the Falkland Island Government Air Service’s small Britt-Norman Islander planes. The visit provided any excellent opportunity to observe some innovative restoration work of the deep peat habitats and see the land managers and firefighters’ challenges first hand.

After several meetings with the Falkland Islands government and many environmental non-government organisations, we provided awareness training for more than 40 firefighters from FIFRS as well as the

U.K.’s Royal Air Force. Using a presentation developed from the Forestry Commission accredited training, we were able to introduce the firefighters to safe working practices and inform them of new tactics and operations. Using the demonstration equipment, we then undertook live fire training at the Falkland Island’s Defence Force firing ranges.

The final few days concluded with meetings with key stakeholders, attending an excellent presentation provided by one of the leading U.K. peat scientists, Susan Page, and planning a future vegetation fire programme to further increase the resilience with colleagues from across the Falkland Islands government.

This might have been one of the furthest-south deployments undertaken by the Forestry Commission, just some 600 miles from Antarctica. Our thanks to all the Forestry Commission staff who supported our deployment, colleagues in the Falkland Islands government’s environmental, agricultural and fire departments, as well as Defra’s British Oversea Territory biodiversity team. The deployment would not have been possible without the support of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, as well as the Royal Air Force. The fire services and residents of the Falkland Islands are now more aware and equipped to manage their evolving risk to wildfire and we look forward to returning soon to provide accredited training to land managers and fir fighters. We gained a better understanding about the impacts of climate change and how shifting weather patterns can drive wildfire risk in places you wouldn’t expect.

Rob Gazzard is the Forestry Commission’s advisor on contingency planning and wildfire in the policy advice team and is seconded to Defra for domestic and international wildfire advise. Since 1999, Gazzard has attended more than 10 large wildfire incidents in the South of England, undertaken training and operational response globally, including North America (Oregon and California) and Europe (Spain and Portugal), as well as a sabbatical to Australia. Gazzard was team leader of the U.K.’s first official international wildfire deployment using a bilateral agreement to Greece in 2018 and first British Overseas Territory deployment in 2023. Gazzard was also programme leader for the U.K. first accredited vegetation fire training modules.