dry out

“When deer are eating native plants, those are being replaced by invasive annual grasses, and then those dry out quickly and burn easily,” Barton said.

The farms are on rich peat soil that used to be underwater but is now slowly drying out.

The habitats where they are found are some of the most diverse in Britain but are at risk from drying out and the impacts of "agricultural intensification", according to Natural Resources Wales.

An extensive global analysis of that data now reveals fresh water is rapidly disappearing beneath much of humanity’s feet, and large swaths of the Earth are drying out.

It is causing more extreme heat, which dries out vegetation, increasing flammability, said Theodore Keeping, wildfire scientist at the centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London.