Source: http://www.theherald.co.za/article.aspx?id=531642

Date: 2010/02/16

Firebreaks set for Outeniqua Mountains

Cathy Dippnall GARDEN ROUTE CORRESPONDENT dippnallc@avusa.co.za

FIREFIGHTERS from six Working on Fire (WoF) teams will start cutting firebreaks today in the Outeniqua Mountains above the Garden Route Dam in George.
This is to eradicate old and alien vegetation and it will be followed by controlled burns starting in three weeks time, to improve water run-off into the catchment area of the dam.
Due to extreme drought conditions in George, the dam level has dropped to 18,2% and has been stretched to supply Wilderness residents with water after the Touw River stopped flowing last week.

Eden disaster management head Gerhard Otto said yesterday it was decided to use the extra WoF teams brought in from KwaZulu Natal and the Free State last week to help contain fires between Bitou and Still Bay.
“It was a last-minute idea to use these extra people to make firebreaks and do a controlled burn above the Garden Route Dam in the Tierkop Hut, old waterworks area.”
Otto said it was a joint initiative between Eden disaster management, the George Municipality, Cape Nature, Mountain to Ocean (MTO), WoF, land conservancies and private land owners.
Tony Marshall, in charge of Cape Nature’s catchment area management, said the block burn was not to “satisfy a need”.
“This is part of a sequence of events in managing catchment areas and has been planned for four years. We decided to use the window of opportunity with the right people to speed up the process.”
The WoF teams will make 10 to 20m-wide firebreaks throughout the 3500ha catchment area by cutting old fynbos and alien bush to ground level. These firebreaks will be used to contain controlled burns within their boundaries.
Marshall said the fires would be on a “block burn cycle” that would optimise future water runoff and help restore groundwater levels. He said indiscriminate burning would cause soil erosion during heavy rains. “The first area we will burn is covered in dense vegetation that is about 30 years old. It is not uncommon to find 3m-thick layers of vegetation.”
He said this type of vegetation, found on the lower sections of the mountain, posed a high fire risk.
“MTO land is infested with aliens and wattle. Nearly all the rivers are overrun with it,” said Marshall.
Cape Nature regional ecologist Dr Anne-Lise Vlok explained the seeds of many alien plants were stimulated to germinate by fires.
“Alien plants are not the only plants that depend on fires to germinate their seeds. Types of fynbos also depend on fires to stimulate their seeds to eject into the mineral rich soil left after a fire. We have to be careful not to burn young or immature fynbos that has not had time to produce seeds.”
Mark van Niekerk from the Southern Cape Fire Protection Association, representing private landowners and conservancies, said members welcomed the initiative, which would lessen the risk of runaway fires, like last week’s blazes that decimated about 6000ha of fynbos and forest in the Southern Cape.