Conservation and Wildfire Prevention, W Cape, RSA

As Climate Change bites, we must take measures to conserve every drop of water possible. Huge appreciation, especially to  Naz and the Dynamix Team, for your part in addressing Climate Change in the Global South  through this project. We won't bore you with the statistics of just how much water an adult poplar, pine or blue-gum tree consumes in a day, but these are all alien species in South Africa and guilty as charged!!! Thanks to your wonderful support there will be a whole lot less of them this summer. While we have had floods this month, and our highest winter rainfall so far for the past 30 years, El Nino is still forecast to give us a drought in the coming summer..... we will wait and see!!

We have slowly cleared the Pine and Port Jackson Willow from the part of Paardeberg  mountain for which we are responsible. These are the more invasive species of trees, of greater threat to biodiversity due to the heat they generate and their behaviour in a wildfire....the Pines especially, once burning, tend to explode, starting multiple smaller fires. Every year we have a few coming up again, and need to attack them again.

However, this quarter we have devoted our attention to the Poplar alien trees that invade our waterways, and fortunately remain confined to them. Our Alien Clearing team for this work hailed from an area near Franschhoek called Pniel. They arrived smartly dressed with appropriate PPE, but the small team meant they worked slowly. Sometimes the team had to use ropes to ensure the alien trees did not damage indigenous vegetation as they fell. So far, they have cleared half of what we had planned before the BIG rains arrived (see the map of planned work in the attached SCOPE OF WORK)), and now the remainder will have to wait for next autumn. The herbicide applied to the cut stump not only permanently kills the tree underground, but  is drawn through the bark into the spreading roots during the fall, when the trees embed nutrients into their roots for winter. This means hopefully, that less sucklings will emerge around the felled trees in the coming summer. We use this emergence and resprouting  to assess the accuracy and correct application of the herbicide, so will make a decision towards the end of the year as to whether the team did a good job, and whether to use them to clear the rest of the poplars. We still have significant groves of poplar trees in two streambeds. 

The good thing is that the harvested wood is used for erosion management (as demonstrated in previous reports) or for firewood, much needed amongst the workers on our farms. The recent floods have unfortunated carried some of the felled logs into the dam below, via the gushing streams, but we will do our best to recover what remain for use on the various farm roads, again to repair flood damage. 

Thank you once again for your unwavering support of our efforts! 

• Scope of work (PDF)
  
• Poplar Clearing Invoice (PDF)
  
• Independent Contractor Agreement (PDF)
  

Happy New Year to all our valued donors, but especially to Naz and the Dynamix team for their ongoing support of the Paardeberg Sustainability Intitiative (PSI), its activities and general costs, as well as for our projects in adapting to climate change.  How time flies, that we already find ourselves in the third month of 2023, and with the hottest part of summer past!! Landscapes in the Global South are definitely getting hotter, drier, windier, more favourable to alien vegetation invasion...all making the setting for a wildfire so much more likely!  So the help from our Northern Hemisphere colleagues is greatly and deeply appreciated. 

Fynbos is a fire-dependent landscape, with many of the plants requiring either heat or smoke to germinate their seeds. It is also vital that the dense canopy of the "Fine bush" is removed by fire every 8-25 years, depending on the veld-type and maturity of the seed-bearing species, These fires allow the bulbs to emerge and have their time in the sun, literally, until they are rendered dormant for the next 8-25 years.  The massive spread of seed on the bare soil then allows the dominant plants to re-establish themsleves in the follwing winter rain season, and the cycle recommences. So, as much as we fear them,we MUST allow  regular fires to happen, in order to save species. For those who do not know, the tiny Western Cape (stretching from Cape Town to Plettenberg Bay) holds one of the six floral kingdoms of the World, with more plant species than the whole of Eurasia, or of the North Americas .... so it is a global biodiversity hotspot for which we MUST take global responsibility.  Thank you again for playing your part in this action. 

We started on Firebreaks in November, and it was a challenge to complete them before wildfire became the serious summer risk that it is, but the main breaks protecting the vineyards have been completed, and now we will move our attention to the maintaining those on the mountain itself. Our team of some 10 workers commenced clearing a good 6m-wide strip aound the base of the mountain  to protect the vineyards ...by manually slashing and clearing the overgrowth to ankle-height, as is prescribed in the Paardeberg Business Unit's  fire-management plan. This was updated in 2022  by our Fire Protection Association, the Greater Cederberg FPA (see link below). South Africa is a global leader in involving every rural citizen in fire prevention, early detection and immediate wildfire response through the establishment of FPA's as Civil Society Organisations to support government institutions and muniscipalities in managing wildfire risk. 

As the taller vegetaion in the firebreaks is slashed, it is stacked for burning later, ideally in situ! This is evident in the series of photographs we have included. However, in many instances these stacks present a high risk for fire themselves, so we collect the stacks by tractor-and-trailer, as time allows, and move them to a "safer" area. They are then burned under a controlled setting, with water and firebeaters on standby, in the winter months.  We also use the burning of the stacks as useful training opportunities for our team and the farm-workers, to experience the intense heat, and their own fear, in the face of a wildfire. This provides an ideal occasion to check that purchased overalls are indeed pure cotton and that safety boots are up to the task of working on hot ground without melting. 

Thank you once again for your support of our work. We have completed the mapping of the firebreaks on the mountain for maintenance in the coming year, and now will be appointing a service provider to attend to these before next fire season. 

Links:

• Firebreak location and specs are provided by our FPA

• PSI Firebreaks (PDF)
  
• PSI Polygon of Poplar for Clearing (PDF)
  
• Quote for PSI Firebreaks (PDF)