03 Jun 2014

Fire has played a major role in determining the distribution of plants across Southern Africa, according to the forestry and range resources (DFRR) technical and support services superintendent, Mr Moroka Tumaeletse.



Mr Tumaeletse said during a prescribed burning workshop in Maun on June 2 that woodland fire was not wholly destructive but caused positive change in the ecology.



“Change is biologically necessary to maintain a healthy ecosystem, resource managers have learnt to manipulate fire causing changes in plant and animal communities to meet their needs and human kind in general, while at the same time pressuring the underlying natural and processes and functions,” he said.



Prescribed fire, he added, could be achieved through various things such as the timing of burning, frequency and intensity of the fire. 

Mr Tumaeletse stated that prescribed fire had been used by professional foresters worldwide in the past to reduce hazardous fields, to prepare fields for planting, to control diseases and improve grazing forests. 



He noted that misconceptions surrounding the use of fire to achieve resource management objectives were slowly being replaced by facts, as knowledge grew regarding the use of prescribed burning.

For her part, a fire expert from Australia, Ms Liz Ferris informed the attendants that most ecosystems needed fire to rejuvenate, adding that prescribed burning was deemed environmentally acceptable, if similar to natural fire.


Prescribed burning, she said, was a planned application of fire under prescribed environmental conditions within defined boundaries to achieve specific objectives. 


“Maintenance of biodiversity requires the application of the appropriate fire regimes for each ecosystem, rainforests may require fire exclusion for over 100 years whereas grasslands can be burnt almost every year with little impact upon biodiversity,” she said.



Ms Ferris noted that fires could lead to soil erosion and impact on water quality; adding that prescribed burning has less impact compared to wildfires since there was provision of buffers around water resources to reduce the effects of contamination of waterways.



She stated that it was crucial to have prescribed burn supervisors to control and guarantee safety at burning sites, and also have contingency plans in place. Ends