Multiple fire brigades from the surrounding towns were notified at 7.40am on Monday 5th April and worked hard to fight the blaze, spread out over an area of approximately 200m wide, on two fronts.
Callum Deveney, Head of Nature Reserves at Cornwall Wildlife Trust, said: 'Controlled burns are an important way of managing heathlands, but they must be planned carefully and carried out at the right time of year. The fires that have burned at Bartinney Downs are nothing of the sort and couldn’t have come at a worse time, with the awakening of nature in spring and the arrival of newborn wildlife. Thankfully our costs to repair the damage look to be low but incidents such as these are a massive set back to our work and our ability to provide the best possible habitats for Cornwall’s wildlife.'