They include endangered birds like hen harriers and water voles, which are now the UK's fastest declining mammal.

The National Trust said it believed ongoing wildfires at Abergwesyn common in Powys had destroyed "the last remaining" local breeding habitat for golden plovers - considered one of the most beautiful birds of the British uplands.

So far this year 110 sq miles (284 sq km) of land has been burnt by wildfires around the UK - an area larger than Birmingham.

Figures obtained by the BBC show that in Wales, fire crews have battled almost 1,400 wildfires already this year, leading fire services to urge people to "act responsibly" and report any suspicious behaviour to the police.

The National Trust said 2025 was "turning out to be the worst year ever for these human-caused fires across the country".

"We're extremely worried, this is looking like it's going to be the worst year for seeing our wildlife going up in flames," said Ben McCarthy, the charity's head of nature conservation.

A record dry spell and unusually high temperatures in March are believed to have contributed to the fires. A low number of blazes in 2024 also left more vegetation to fuel them.

Coed Cadw, the Woodland Trust in Wales, said an "irreplaceable" area of temperate Atlantic rainforest had been affected at Allt Boeth near Aberystwyth, with damage to protected bluebells too.

Also known as Celtic rainforest, the habitat harbours scarce plants, lichens and fungi, and is considered more threatened than tropical rainforest.

In England, the National Trust said several thousand newly planted trees at Marsden Moor, in West Yorkshire, had gone up in flames.

While on the Morne Mountains, in Northern Ireland, invertebrates and ground dwelling animals like reptiles were "simply being torched alive".

"That then cascades through the food web because without the invertebrates you don't get the birds who are reliant on them for food," Mr McCarthy said.

He said government funding to help farmers and land managers restore peat bogs in the uplands, to prevent fires while also soaking in planet-warming carbon and providing habitat, was essential.

Conservation charities including The Wildlife Trusts and the Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru (INCC) also voiced fears for the future of the water vole, which is already under serious threat from habitat loss and predation by American minks.

Small animals like water voles and shrews, which live in burrows, can survive fast-moving fires but their habitats and the food they rely on are destroyed.

Water voles are "the fastest-declining mammal ever" according to Rob Parry of the INCC.

"Their last foothold [in Wales] is in the uplands so when those sites are burned it is awful for that particular population, but from a UK point of view we are one step closer to the extinction of an entire species," he said.