Severe wildfire legacies suppress methane emissions after peatland rewetting

Drained peatlands are major sources of greenhouse gases, but rewetting them to restore carbon storage often triggers substantial methane emissions and faces resistance from agricultural land users. Wildfires are becoming more frequent on these drained landscapes and can sharply reduce agricultural productivity. It remains unclear whether severely wildfire-affected peatlands can serve as effective targets for rewetting. Here we show that rewetting severely wildfire-affected peat soils suppresses methane emissions by more than 90% compared with rewetting non-fire-affected soils. Severe wildfire legacies increase soil carbon stability, raise pH and electrical conductivity, reduce methanogenic functional gene abundance, and can override typical hydrological controls, turning what is usually a methane surge into a strong net climate benefit. These changes position recent severe wildfire footprints as overlooked low-emission, high-priority targets for peatland rewetting that also reduce land-use conflict. Global scaling indicates that prioritizing rewetting on severely wildfire-affected degraded peatlands could avoid up to 0.8 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent methane emissions per year, with more than 70% of the potential in Asia. The findings reveal a practical pathway to accelerate restoration by harnessing wildfire legacies rather than fighting them.