Innovative social media trial launches Peak District summer wildfire awareness campaign

The summer holidays are here. It can be a wonderful time of year, where adventures can be had, new skills learned, new territories explored, all facilitated by long sunny days. Spring 2025 was the UK’s warmest and sunniest on record and despite a few welcome showery days, the summer is shaping up to be warm and dry too, with July already hosting the third heatwave of the year, putting the landscape at extreme risk from wildfire.

To prepare visitors for their summer adventures, Moors for the Future Partnership have teamed up with digital marketing agency nativve to take a brand-new approach to wildfire awareness communication on social media. Trialling new ways of expressing landscape protection messaging, the collaboration aims to be brave in its content production. The team will monitor the impact of the content to learn how to reach new audiences and let them know how to get maximum enjoyment from their walks with minimum risk to themselves and the beautiful habitats they are exploring.

nativve are donating their expertise as part of their 1% for the Planet support to Moors for the Future Partnership and are enlisting the help of their network of exciting influencers and content makers to run a multiple-approach campaign of social media posts across Instagram and TikTok. The campaign will include science-based content, genius hacks and confessions-style videos.

The campaign will begin in late July and run right across the Summer holidays up until September 2025. Moors for the Future Partnership’s Communications Programme Manager Emma Shaw says,

“This campaign will be radically different from any campaign launched by Moors for the Future Partnership before. We’re taking the organisation out of its comfort zone in order to learn from both our current and potential audiences about how to deliver wildfire risk messages to them. It’s only been possible thanks to the incredibly kind donation from nativve and we have learned so much from them while putting this campaign together. Now it’s time to roll out the campaign and listen to our audiences by monitoring their reaction to it.”

With 20 million people living within one hour’s drive of the Peak District National Park, the park, which, next year, will celebrate its 75th anniversary, will host many groups of friends, families and lone explorers over the summer months. The park covers five counties, Derbyshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire and Greater Manchester and includes vast areas of precious upland peatland, including “rarer than rainforest” blanket bog.

With peat being made up of 50% carbon, long spells of hot dry weather and increased numbers of people visiting the landscape increases the risk of wildfire on this fragile moorland landscape.

Already this year the Peak District and South Pennines uplands have suffered over 40 wildfires including the popular Goyt Valley area and Kinder Scout. In total, an area of over 1,400 hectares has been impacted by fire, the equivalent of 1,961 football pitches. The loss of habitat, wildlife and the long-term damage to the peat has been devasting for land managers and conservationists, as well as for the public who cherish this landscape.

Moors for the Future Partnership, The Moorland Centre, Edale, Hope Valley, Derbyshire S33 7ZA

Moors for the Future Partnership alongside Peak District National Park are hoping this new social media campaign will unite the whole community to work together to protect the moorlands from wildfire, including helping visitors to know what to bring on days out, what not to bring and what to do if anyone spots a wildfire themselves.

Tim Slack, Digital Marketing Expert at nativve, said:

“nativve is a digital marketing and advertising agency based in Sheffield. We have been a member of 1% for the Planet for a number of years, having previously supported The Rivers Trust, Woodland Trust and Protect Our Winters Europe.

This year we decided we’d apply our expertise and resources to supporting Moors for the Future Partnership, as all of our team spend time in the unique Peak District landscape and actively participate in outdoor activities in the area.

Having worked with numerous outdoor and lifestyle brands over the years including, Patagonia, Mammut, Gore-Tex and Teva to develop their audiences and engage them to take specific actions, we felt it was a great fit to work with the Moors for the Future team and develop a strategy to help spread the message of wildfire awareness this summer, especially as the seasonal temperatures rise as a result of climate change.”

Phil Mulligan, Chief Executive, Peak District National Park Authority said:

“It is vital we now use social media to engage new visitors to the National Park. We have decades of experience of reaching those using the National Park via Visitor Centres and conventional media. However, we now have millions of new visitors and many people from this next generation base their trip solely on what they have seen on social media. Edgy content on the platforms new audiences are using is exactly what we need. I welcome this innovation and am grateful to the support we are getting from nativve.”