Estate Living Magazine New Beginnings - Issue 37 January 2019 | Page 44

C o m m u n i t y
L i v i n g
PHOENIX
RISING
The devastating Knysna Fires of 2017
destroyed 22,000 hectares of the
Garden Route, and a further 85,000
hectares burned over ten tragic
days in October and November, 2018.
Residents of the area have been left
picking up the pieces, rebuilding
homes and businesses – and,
crucially, rehabilitating thousands
of hectares of devastated fynbos
and pine plantations. But if you’re
managing private land, where do
you even begin?
Interestingly, while large areas
of fynbos burned, and the pine
plantations were devastated, the
extensive Afromontane forest
experienced only some singeing on
the edges. And that’s why we make
such a fuss about biodiversity.
If you’ve never experienced one, it’s
almost impossible to comprehend a
wildfire that’s fanned by incredibly high
winds, and fed by an oversupply of fuel.
But that’s exactly what the people of
Knysna, Sedgefield, Plett, Storms River,
and dozens of surrounding villages have
had to deal with – not once, but twice in a
little over 16 months.
But this is a resilient community, and
the rebuilding began almost as soon as
the ash stopped falling from the skies.
Rehabilitating the vegetation, though –
and particularly the invaluable fynbos of
the area – took (and will take) a little longer.
Fields of aliens
Environmentalists had been warning
for some time before the fires of June
2017 that fuel loads in the region were
dangerously high. This, they said, was due
to the presence of invasive alien trees that
had been colonising large swathes of land
for many years.
Any species imported to an environment
has the potential to become invasive, i.e. to
out-compete the indigenous vegetation,
if it finds conditions conducive, and –
perhaps more importantly – if no insects or
fungi living there attack it, and thus limit its
capacity for reproduction.
Compounding
the
problem,
the
seeds of trees like rooikrans (Acacia
cyclops) and Australian blackwood
(Acacia melanoxylon) – two of the most
problematic plant invaders in the southern
Cape – can rest in the ground for years,