Visuals of fires and the destruction they caused are burned into our memories year after year. It is a stark reminder that fires do not discriminate against anything or anyone that lays in its path. Many of South Africa’s diverse and unique indigenous vegetation are both fire-prone and fire-adapted, but it needs them to be at the right time and intensity. Fires are and always have been a part of the landscape; they occur as a natural phenomenon in grasslands, woodlands, fynbos and in indigenous forests.

The Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) Working for Water Programme has invested billions of Rands in controlling invasive alien species in the country and over one billion Rand has been spent in the Western Cape alone.