NEWS
Trusting local knowledge : the case of fire management in a Namibian park
1
Glynis Joy Humphrey , 2 Gina Ziervogel and
3
Lindsey Gillson
Current Address : 1 Postdoctoral Fellow , University of Cape Town ; 2 Associate Professor , Department of Environmental and Geographical Science and African Climate and Development Initiative Research Chair , University of Cape Town and 3 Associate Professor Plant Conservation Unit , University of Cape Town . Reprinted From : https :// bit . ly / 3gp6zZI
F ire and humans have a long history
in African savannas . Fire management has played a role in maintaining biodiversity and in the livelihoods of rural communities . One example is when rural people in west African savannas in Mali burn a “ seasonal mosaic ” in the landscape . A combination of unburned , early burned and recently burned vegetation reduces the risk of more dangerous fires late in the season .
This type of burning also protects and increases biodiversity . And it enables rural people to hunt animals , gather plant foods and regenerate grazing for cattle . Understanding this history is useful when managing contemporary fire regimes .
The Bwabwata National Park in northeast Namibia has a long and complex history of fire management . The park lies at the centre of southern Africa ’ s Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area . The park is unusual in that people live in it alongside wildlife , unlike many conservation areas where people have been excluded from the landscape . People living in the villages use areas zoned for subsistence in the form of livestock and crops , and sourcing wild resources like edible and medicinal plants . These areas also host community-based tourism projects and trophy hunting enterprises .
Both the Khwe-San ( former huntergatherers ) and Mbukushu ( agro-pastoralists ) used fire as part of hunting and agropastoral practices in the area for millennia . These traditions were disrupted by colonial occupation because
Figure 1 : A late-season fire in Bwabwata National Park ( Conor Eastment )
of a belief that they were damaging to the environment .
Managed burns have only recently been reinstated formally in policy . The government now encourages the use of burning for management purposes early in the dry season to prevent the spread of large fires in the late dry season .
We carried out research into how , when , why and where people have used fire in the park . We believed it would help to integrate local ecological knowledge with today ’ s ecological management practice .
Based on our findings , we argue that understanding this history is crucial to designing effective fire management to maintain biodiversity and support the livelihoods of people who live in the park .
Politics and fire
Fires were banned in Namibia for over a hundred years ( 1884 to 2005 ), under colonial policies and in the early years of independence . This was because fire was largely misunderstood by the government . The belief was that the traditional burning practices of the Khwe-San people were unsustainable and
25 Grassroots Vol 20 No 4 December 2020