Britain’s countryside is on “red alert” after enduring a severe year for wildfires, heat and drought, the National Trust has warned.

With 2025 on track to be the warmest year on record, the charity said the country’s landscapes and wildlife had been strained.

“It’s a boiling frog analogy, where these extreme events are now the new norm. The compound impact is year after year of these extreme weather events is just exacerbating the pressures and stresses on the natural world,” said Ben McCarthy, the trust’s head of nature conservation.

A mild, wet winter, punctuated by Storm Éowyn, gave way to the sunniest spring and hottest summer on record. The resulting drought — ranking among the most intense since 1976 — dried up ponds, suffocated fish in overheated lakes, and caused arable farmers to suffer the second-worst harvest since 1984.

However, it was the fires that left the most visible scars. McCarthy said more than 5,300 hectares of National Trust land had been burnt, the highest amount on record and in line with the UK as a whole having its worst wildfire year to date.

Marsden Moor in Yorkshire and Holt Heath in Dorset were among the areas burnt. However, the Abergwesyn Common blaze in April was the largest fire on the charity’s land, burning an area about 1,600 hectares and stretching across a five-mile front at one point.

The blaze, which was started deliberately, destroyed the last-known breeding grounds of golden plovers in the area. The habitats of the black darter, a rare dragonfly, the common lizard and the common frog were also affected. Rangers warned the ecological damage would last for decades.

The Abergwesyn Common incident is also estimated to have wiped out about 20 years of accumulated peat, the organic matter that grows very slowly, at about 1mm per year. Peatland is a vital store of carbon, acting as a brake on climate change.

“Heat, drought and fire are the defining headlines of 2025. In just two years we’ve lurched from a very wet period to record-breaking heat and dryness that put our countryside on red alert,” said McCarthy.

The heat also took a heavy toll on Britain’s woodlands. Newly planted saplings suffered loss rates of up to 40 per cent — far higher than the usual 10 to 15 per cent — while mature trees at Dyffryn Gardens in Cardiff shed their leaves in a “false autumn” seven weeks early due to stress.

In the mountains of Eryri, also known as Snowdonia, a rare alpine plant called tufted saxifrage (Saxifraga cespitosa) narrowly survived hot and dry conditions. With only seven plants remaining, rangers described the species as the “canary in the coalmine” for the impact of climate change on British wildlife.

Despite the bleak overall picture, the charity’s review highlighted the success of projects adapting to the extreme weather wrought by global warming. While some traditional landscapes withered, restored wetlands and beaver enclosures at estates such as Wallington in Northumberland and Holnicote in Somerset remained lush, providing vital refuges for water voles, amphibians, and birds.

McCarthy said that the government was failing to recognise that the economy was underpinned by a healthy environment. “The problem is too simplistic to call out bats and newts as the problem for economic growth,” he said, arguing that recent changes to nature regulations undermined the country’s ability to meet its biodiversity targets.