![\"Fire](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/00244f3f-614.jpg\"\/)
\nThe landscape has been damaged following the wildfires in the Mourne Mountains<\/p>\n
A week of fires in upland areas of Northern Ireland has left an “incinerated landscape” affecting wildlife and walkers, conservationists say.<\/p>\n
In the past week, the fire and rescue service has put out numerous fires in the Mourne Mountains of Co Down and in other parts of Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
It followed a period of very dry weather which had been preceded by a wildfire warning.<\/p>\n
It is believed the vast majority of fires were deliberately set. The intention may be to burn off gorse and heather and promote grass growth.<\/p>\n
It is difficult to catch people in the act of fire-setting and enforcement is virtually non-existent.<\/p>\n
\nThe landscape has been damaged following the wildfires in the Mourne Mountains<\/p>\n
Nigel McKinney is the chief executive of the Mournes Heritage Trust, a conservation charity.<\/p>\n
He said he was “shocked, disgusted, overwhelmed and frustrated” after a series of fires in various part of the range damaged around 18 sq\/km of often protected habitat.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got a blackened landscape, an incinerated landscape.<\/p>\n
“The plants have been burned, the nests of ground nesting birds and their eggs, the insects that they feed on.<\/p>\n
“We’re already a nature-depleted place and the uplands are a repository of our biodiversity and it’s going to take many, many years for there to be a recovery,” said Mr McKinney.<\/p>\n
Slieve Beagh Mountain borders counties Tyrone, Fermanagh and Monaghan. It is one of the few places in Ireland where the critically endangered Curlew comes to breed.<\/p>\n
A cross-border project has been running in an attempt to support what breeding pairs there are and every nest is crucial.<\/p>\n
But a fire there last week forced the abandonment of an active nest with four eggs. The fire spread across the bog stopping inches away from the nest.<\/p>\n
The eggs have now been recovered in the hope that they may be able to be incubated to hatching, but there are no guarantees.<\/p>\n
![\"Abandoned](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/00244f42-614.jpg\"\/)
\nThe nest of Curlew eggs was abandoned near the burn line in Slieve Beagh<\/p>\n
Dr John Cusack is chair of the Slieve Beagh Curlew Conservation Trust.<\/p>\n
The breeding wader and its burbling call is synonymous with remote places in Ireland but has been in critical decline.<\/p>\n
“We’re talking about a 98% population decline over the last 10 or 20 years. It’s got to the stage now where we really have to make sure that every nest survives.<\/p>\n
“This particular nest represents hours of monitoring, nest protection, putting up fences. That has all kind of been wasted, unfortunately,” said Dr Cusack.<\/p>\n
He praised the fire and forestry services who managed to put the fire out but he said only time would tell whether the recovered eggs would be viable.<\/p>\n
Slieve Beagh has been hit before and so have the Mournes.<\/p>\n
For Mr McKinney, one of the biggest problems is the cumulative impact of annual fires in the upland areas.<\/p>\n
The Mournes has seen a huge rise in amenity use by the public since Covid. Many more people are taking to the hills.<\/p>\n
He said everyone needs to get the message, landowners and recreational users, that the mountains are a sensitive area that must be protected.<\/p>\n
Mr McKinney said after the fires there was “more life on the moon” than in the affected areas.<\/p>\n
“This is a really attractive site for people to go walking, or a picnic.<\/p>\n
“It’s a really good introduction for children and young people to the beauty of the uplands.<\/p>\n
“But who wants to walk in a black and charred incinerated landscape with all that biodiversity gone and all the natural beauty eroded,” he questioned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A week of fires in upland areas of Northern Ireland has left an “incinerated landscape” affecting wildlife and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-429834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}