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At 6 a.m., I meet Pete Short, a drone pilot, to join him on a dawn patrol in Cairngorms National Park. Pete has been carrying out this task for nearly three months, ever since a massive wildfire swept through this area in July. Although the flames that once ravaged the hills are no longer visible, the scars they left behind remain concealed beneath the surface.
After a rough drive deep into the woodland, Pete sends his thermal drone into the morning sky. My role is to keep the drone within sight while he studies the thermal images streaming back to his screen. “Every week I hope that I find none,” Pete shares. “On the last thermal flight I did we found eight.” It is not long before a faint white glow emerges on the thermal feed beneath a tree, signalling another hotspot.
Sarah, a conservation expert involved in the recovery effort, comments on the resilience of the landscape. “Some of that will be incredibly quick, some of it will take years, decades, or even beyond our lifetime,” she explains. “It will recover, but we just don’t know what that’s going to look like yet.” The drones that played a key role during the fire are now tasked with monitoring regeneration over time. Pete programs the devices to follow precise, repeatable routes, capturing consistent photographs and video monthly and yearly to document changes.
This systematic approach, Sarah notes, will deliver invaluable insight into the healing process: “This standard drone route will have exactly the same route flown month by month, year by year and visually it’s going to give us some amazing information about how it’s recovering.” Furthermore, Pete sees potential for the drones to intervene earlier in the future, detecting new fires before they spiral out of control. “It’s those moments before a wildfire gets out of control that could be critical to stopping it before it gets out of hand,” he says.
During our patrol, the drone helps us locate another burning hotspot, almost invisible from afar. Upon investigation, beneath a thin layer of soil, the heat is intense and smoke becomes apparent when the ground is disturbed. This information is promptly relayed to ground crews for suppression. While new growth can be seen sprouting above, underground embers persist, demonstrating how recovery and risk exist side by side in this recovering forest
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