Botswana’s big problem is not elephants, but runaway bushfires
Botswana’s big problem is not elephants, but runaway bushfires
Don Pinnock, Daily Maverick
January 18, 2022
See link
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-01-18-botswanas-big-problem-is-not-elephants-but-runaway-bushfires/
for photos.
The debate on what to do about elephants in Botswana is frequently divided
into those who want to cull them and those who don’t.
At one extreme are hunter Ron Thomson and his followers, who have been
lobbying the government of Botswana to cull more than 60,000 of its
elephants. At the other end are those who believe natural systems and
processes must take their course.
Then there are those like Peace Parks and Kaza who want to reconnect
Botswana’s migration corridors with their former ranges in southern Angola
and Zambia in particular. This would take them into areas where there are
few people, few elephants, but ample food and water.
The driver of these debates is loss of trees, and it’s misguided. It
overlooks the prime culprit of deforestation — northern Botswana’s all too
regular runaway bushfires, as the fire map and photographs show.
There have been other causes of deforestation. In the mid-1900s, sleeping
sickness and nagana devastated large expanses of Africa, killing people and
livestock. Tsetse flies were the vector and one of the more radical
initiatives was to create immense treeless corridors to curtail the spread
of the fly. It worked. In Botswana ring-barked acacia camelthorn tree
statues were still standing along large sections of the Linyanti 20 years
ago. But memories are short and elephants took the blame for the
destruction of those ancient trees, not humans fighting tsetse.
Something even greater was in the wings — years of exceptional rainfall.
The summer of 2020/2021 provided exceptionally good rains throughout much
of Botswana. Many areas recorded double the average rainfall. Grasses and
vegetation thrived and bumper crops were grown.
But those rains created abundant fuel for bushfires, which came at a cost
to the environment later in the year once the veld started to dry out.
The combination of a huge fire-load, Botswana’s steady prevailing winds and
a deliberate match here or arson there resulted in massive tracts of prime
wilderness land being burned to cinders.
These were often super hot and destructive fires that destroyed thousands
of hectares of prime Okavango, Chobe and Moremi wildernesses. Countless
forests were razed to ashes, particularly during the wild bushfires of
September and October when many of these photographs were taken.
High grasses and dense vegetation have their adversaries in and around the
Okavango Delta. Safari companies, hunters, poachers — even mokoro paddlers
— prefer wide-open short grass plains which concentrate wildlife and
improve sightings.
As a result, for decades many parts of the Okavango are burnt each year.
Any ecologist will tell you that these hot annual burns are not sustainable
and something will give unless wildfires are reduced to a “cool” fire only
every fourth or fifth year.
And here’s a warning: it looks as though the summer of 2021/2022 will be
another season of great rains bringing more fuel for more bushfires. Many
more trees will be destroyed unless the authorities take stock.
So Where to From Here:
Botswana’s administration must understand that the decades of relentless
over-burning of much of northern Botswana (and in the Okavango in
particular) is unsustainable and that realistic bushfire prevention
measures need to urgently be put in place. What’s needed is fire education
and enforcement of legislation. Fire prevention teams (with water-bombing
helicopters on standby from July to October) must be in place if the trees
of the Okavango are to be preserved for future generations.
The governments of Angola, Botswana, Namibia and Zambia must give Peace
Parks and Kaza initiatives all the backing and support they need to turn
both organisations from being merely inspiring initiatives to action on the
ground. Old migration routes can be opened up quickly between Botswana,
Angola and Zambia by working with communities. Their ministries must be
given the instruction, the motivation, the backing and the tools to make
those elephant corridors happen. The presidents of all these countries have
signed the agreements and the principles are sound. The days of talking
must be over — it’s time for tangible results.
It is time for all safari concessionaires to start far-reaching
ring-barking prevention programmes to protect their most vulnerable trees
from fire and elephants — baobabs, marulas and knobthorns in particular.
Chicken mesh wrapping is highly effective, cost-effective and virtually
invisible to the naked eye.
When the elephant debate resurfaces, as it will, authorities need to
remember that elephants do indeed crop and prune, but that much — maybe
most — of the damage to trees and forests en masse is not caused only by
elephants but by wild runaway bushfires.
Stop killing, start cooling both the debate and the land. Uncontrolled wild
bushfires destroy far more trees than browsing elephants.