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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.