Cape Town – As fire season approaches, the Garden Route District Municipality (GRDM), including the Garden Route Environmental Forum (GREF), continues to explore climate change risks and developments to gear up for a challenging and unpredictable environment.
“November marks the month when a year ago over 100 000 hectares either side of the Outeniqua mountains burnt to tinder, with several lives lost and millions of rand in damages to infrastructure and grazing, resulting in significant loss of income to the region, as well as precious jobs lost,” said Cobus Meiring of the Southern Cape Landowners Initiative (SCLI).
“All indications are that the Southern Cape should place a lot more focus on how we prepare our region for a changing climate, and the risks and opportunity it brings with it.”
According to Meiring, climate change and continuous fire risks impact the environment in many ways, including a marked reduction in air quality, increased risks in terms of water quality and quantity, lower levels of national and international investment, slow but irreversible loss of biodiversity and a generally lower quality of life for those residing in the area.
Meanwhile, the wildfires have also sparked opportunities for small-scale businesses doing invasive alien plant clearing and control operations.
“The wildfire disasters of 2017 and 2018 triggered a secondary environmental disaster in the shape of aggressive growth and regrowth
of invasive alien plants,” Meiring said.
“Already reeling from the loss of life, loss of thousands of hectares of grazing, hundreds of kilometres of fencing and irrigation equipment and infrastructure destroyed, landowners now also have to battle an aggressive onslaught of invasive alien plant growth, stimulated by the fires and fuelled by favourable rainy conditions throughout the winter.”
The upside was that there are a number of trained and equipped contractor teams available that specialise in the control and eradication of invasive alien plants.
Meiring emphasised the importance of drawing up Invasive Alien Plant Control Plans.