\n A small adder – the UK’s only venomous snake – was among the animals found during a specialist rescue operation carried out by Forestry England and trained staff and volunteers from the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust.\n<\/p>\n
\n Teams carefully searched the fire-hit area for key species including adders, sand lizards and slow worms, with surviving animals safely relocated to nearby parts of the Forest.\n<\/p>\n
\n The rescue came as Forestry England revealed the wildfire has destroyed more than 100 hectares of New Forest heathland, with the landscape expected to take many years to recover.\n<\/p>\n
\n The blaze, which started near Poulner Hill on the A31, spread rapidly across the heathland and required a major emergency response involving firefighters, off-road vehicles and specialist equipment.\n<\/p>\n
\n Michael Pittock, head of planning and environment at Forestry England, said: “It is devastating to walk around the area of the wildfire and see so much destruction especially on heathland which is such a rare and important habitat.\n<\/p>\n
\n “A large area is damaged, but we are also very aware that without the remarkable response from the fire and emergency services it could have been so much worse.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The fire burned deeply into the ground, destroying vegetation including heathers, gorse and pillwort, a rare plant found in the New Forest.\n<\/p>\n
\n It also damaged seed banks beneath the soil, while a significant number of ancient beech and oak trees, some of which had stood for hundreds of years, were destroyed after flames penetrated their root systems.\n<\/p>\n
\n Even bogs, which are considered among the most resilient habitats to heat, were partially destroyed.\n<\/p>\n
\n Forestry England said the scale of the damage means there will have been a “significant impact” on wildlife, with a considerable number of animals believed to have been killed.\n<\/p>\n
\n Forestry England teams searching the area (Image: Forestry England)\n<\/p>\n
\n However, conservationists were able to rescue surviving animals, including the small adder.\n<\/p>\n
\n Forestry England is now drawing up plans to help the landscape recover, using experience from previous major heathland fires.\n<\/p>\n
\n The site is close to an area damaged by a fire almost 40 years ago which has since been restored.\n<\/p>\n
\n Teams plan to take cuttings from heather at the restored site and use them to create a protective layer over the damaged ground, helping soils recover and reseed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A small adder – the UK’s only venomous snake – was among the animals found during a specialist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-745017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}