HESSEQUA NUUS - The Duivenhoks Conservancy, under the leadership of Dr. John Thorne, is spearheading a drive to safeguard the approximately 3 000 hectare burn scar from invasive alien plant regrowth in the Vermaaklikheid area of the Garden Route.
Wildfires raged through the area in October 2018 and destroyed invaluable historical properties along the Duivenhoks River. The tiny village of Vermaaklikheid is situated on the Duivenhoks River near Witsand.
Cobus Meiring of the Southern Cape Landowners Initiative (SCLI) says Vermaaklikheid landowners hope to save their land from another generation of invasive alien plant infestation by preventing the area from being overrun by predominantly Rooikrans. "The fires have provided landowners with a clean slate to save their land," says Meiring.
The Duivenhoks Conservancy is encouraging landowners to develop invasive alien control plans for their properties and to collectively deal with the problem.
Heading up a small team of conservancy team members, project manager Abe Pretorius is confident that even the small team can make a huge difference in managing invasive alien plant regrowth by hand-pulling rooikrans plants as they appear.
"In what is becoming the norm in a region staggering from the one fire disaster to the next, invasive alien plants almost always contribute to the severity and intensity of wildfires in the Western and Eastern Cape," warns Meiring.
On top of the already-present threat of large-scale invasive alien plant regrowth, the lunar landscape left behind by the fires is also exposed to large-scale wind erosion.
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