GARDEN ROUTE NEWS - A multi-disciplinary action plan, known as the Southern Cape Environmental Rehabilitation Plan (Scerp), was established to deal with extensive damage caused by the June fires in the Plettenberg Bay and Knysna areas.
In order to include fire damage suffered earlier this year in areas outside of Knysna and Plettenberg Bay, such as Albertinia and Still Bay, a regional approach was taken.
Scerp is to provide organisational leadership to oversee the process of environmental recovery, says Cobus Meiring of the Southern Cape Landowners Initiative (SCLI).
Representatives from the key local, regional and national government entities, specialising in all matters environmental, will be on the steering committee.
The Southern Cape Fire Protection Association (SCFPA), Eden District Disaster Management, Knysna Municipality, Cape Nature, SANParks and Working on Fire are some of the key role players.
"One of the first tasks Scerp is embarking on, is to collect digital information on where, and on what scale, the environment has been damaged during the fires. Scerp will take stock of the current state of the environment in terms of rehabilitation, where nature is likely to suffer further damages, and to monitor and evaluate the situation," says Meiring.
Equipment to prevent erosion from exposed inclines is already being supplied to the region, and teams are being readied for training on how interventions should be applied. Erosion should be dealt with urgently, as the Southern Cape is fast entering the rainy season, and besides potential erosion there are many more aspects pertaining to the environment that will require intervention and monitoring.
Dealing with the unknown factor
Meiring adds that neither the Southern Cape, nor South Africa has, to date, recorded the kind of infrastructural and environmental destruction on the scale brought about by the recent fires.
"Though records have been kept of fires that caused damages over a large footprint in the previous century, there are too many landscape variables today to make a parallel conclusion. Because of the intensity of the fires, fynbos areas will benefit from the heat and will recover perfectly. Other areas may well be unable to recover, take decades to recover, or recover but soon after succumb to the ever-present threat of invasive alien plants."
Scerp and other parallel task teams working on different aspects are in the process of collating information and quantifying damages, but there is a long way to go yet.
"Exactly how nature will bounce back, or not, will have to be seen. To develop a broad spectrum of informed opinions, Scerp is interviewing environmental rehabilitation specialists to obtain information on possible scenarios and solutions.
Monitoring specific sites for unwanted developments, and evaluating the levels of success of specific interventions aimed at limiting environmental damage, will be crucial over the next few years."
The SCLI will lend project management and secretariat support to Scerp. SCLI is a public platform for landowners and land managers with an interest in the control and eradication of invasive alien plants in the Southern Cape. SCLI is supported by the Table Mountain Fund, an associated trust of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in South Africa.
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