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Restoration plans for the Common
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| Roger Graham, Chairman of the Friends of Meadowridge Common, with speaker, Dr Charmaine Oxtoby. |
At the AGM of the Friends of Meadowridge Common on 24
February 2020, Dr Charmaine Oxtoby gave a talk on the proposed ecological burn on
Meadowridge Common, an exciting plan to restore the critically endangered
Cape Flats Sand Fynbos that is fast dying out on the Common. This is a
co-operative venture involving The Friends of Meadowridge Common
(represented by the Chairman Roger Graham and Botanical Officer Fiona Watson),
the City of Cape Town Recreation & Parks Department (Sihle Jonas, Luyanda
Mjuleni and Fay Howa), the City of Cape
Town Biodiversity Management Branch (Charmaine Oxtoby and her team),
SANBI’s Millennium Seed Bank and the City Fire and Rescue Services.
Why does the Common need a fire?
There is
just 10% left of the critically endangered veld type, Cape Flats Sand Fynbos,
that only occurs in Cape Town and nowhere else. Like all fynbos – which is
fire-prone and fire-dependent – it needs to burn otherwise it will gradually
die. The ideal time for a burn is every ten to twelve years. Meadowridge
Common contains a small remnant (5,39 hectares) of Cape Flats Sand Fynbos where
some 137 different plant species have been recorded. The Common is a
Biodiversity Agreement Site, but it is degraded due to a long history of pines
and lack of fire – apart from a small wildfire in December 2003. After years of motivating for a fire, the time has finally come
and a restoration burn has been planned.
The
objective of this planned ecological burn is to stimulate the fynbos seed bank.
Because of the long history of pines growing on the common (over 60 years now),
and a 16 year time lapse since the last fire, much of the native seed bank may
have lost viability as it tends to do after 30 years. So some active
restoration of fynbos plants that would have once occurred here will also need
to happen.
Fire on the Common
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| The proposed burn area on the left of the path. |
Why is
Meadowridge Common important?
Cape Flats
Sand Fynbos is a critically endangered veld type – only 11% remains in a
natural state and only 1% is formally conserved. There are some patches where
the natural Cape Flats Sand Fynbos still occurs in a degraded state, but with
the potential to be restored. As our national conservation target is to have
30% of each veld type conserved, every bit counts. One such valuable patch is
Meadowridge Common. In the heart of suburbia, it is a small natural remnant of
what was Bergvliet Farm where William Purcell amassed his impressive collection
of plants and animals that forms the basis of our knowledge of what used to
occur in Cape Flats Sand Fynbos before urbanization destroyed most of it.
How can
fynbos be restored on the Common?
Fynbos evolved
to take advantage of fire and is now dependant on fairly frequent fires to
trigger growth mechanisms and recycle nutrients in order for it to thrive. But
fires don’t happen often in suburbia, and fynbos expert, Tony Rebelo, described
Meadowridge Common as “the living dead” because without fire to stimulate new
growth, it was slowly dying. The huge variety of species that have been growing
there for decades, surprising visitors and scientists alike, will gradually die
and disappear under introduced trees, invasive weeds and rank grass. A chance
fire on the Common a few years ago caused by vagrants and quickly extinguished,
revealed that there was still life in the soil. In the years that followed, bulbs
appeared and bushes re-sprouted, seedlings took off and there was a burst of
life in the burned area, spurring the Friends of Meadowridge Common to request
that the City of Cape Town Biodiversity Management Branch undertake a
controlled ecological burn of the Common.
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