WILDLIFE experts are asking the public to be alert to the risk of moorland fires — despite the recent blast of cold weather.

Freak warm weather last week has left moorlands dry, and Lancashire Wildlife Trust fears a repeat of last year’s blazes which destroyed huge areas of the West Pennine Moors and the trust-managed Red Moss in Horwich.

Wildfires last year cost Greater Manchester Fire Service about £750,000.

Dave Dunlop, from the trust, said: “So far there’s no drought here in North West England, but there will be an increasing risk of moorland and mossland fires if the current dry spell should prove prolonged again this year.

“This is particularly an issue in the West Pennine Moors, where arson compounds the risk of accidental fires, endangering moorland wildlife and releasing the large amounts of carbon captured in the peat over thousands of years back into the atmosphere.”

He added that The West Pennine Moors is of national importance for its blanket bog habitat and its populations of moorland birds, such as golden plover, snipe, curlew and merlin.

The only breeding population of the nationally rare twite in the West Pennine Moors was destroyed by fire on Anglezarke Moor in 2010 and it has not bred there since.

Common lizards are also at risk on Smithills Moor near Bolton.

In May last year, the wildlife trust worked with the fire service to put out a blaze at Red Moss, Horwich.

The trust is restoring the Moss, which was drained for peat extraction in previous centuries.

It is a designated site of special scientific interest and is home to breeding birds, including snipe, lapwing, reed bunting and the rare meadow pipit, as well as frogs, common lizard and water vole.