Media Release: Understanding the Environmental Cost of Anthropogenic Fires

9 February 2026

At the request of Cobus Meiring of the Garden Route Environmental Forum (GREF), sustainability analyst Ryan Kaye comments on the environmental impact of recent and ongoing fires in the Southern Cape.

With the recent spate of runaway fires along the Garden Route echoing the devastating fires experienced in Los Angeles in 2025 it is important to reflect on their broader implications. Beyond the obvious financial, infrastructural and emotional toll, fires carry significant environmental costs that are often overlooked in public discourse.

Fire plays an important, and in the case of fynbos sometimes vital, role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. However, not all fires are beneficial. Fires that are started or intensified by human activity, known as anthropogenic fires almost always cause more environmental harm than good.

Naturally occurring fire cycles help prevent bush encroachment, open new habitats for pioneer species, recycle nutrients into the soil and enable the germination of certain fynbos plant species. These fires occur in relatively stable cycles shaped by fuel build-up, climatic conditions and ignition sources such as lightning. Local plant species have adapted to these rhythms, allowing enough time for vegetation recovery and seed banks to replenish between fires. Natural fires also burn at predictable intensities, sparing many mature plants and buried seeds.

Controlled burns carried out by conservation land managers mimic these natural cycles and play an important role in maintaining ecosystem health while reducing risk to infrastructure. Outside of these carefully planned interventions, most human-caused fires lack the safeguards inherent in natural systems.

Human ignitions far exceed lightning-caused fires, resulting in fires that occur too frequently and at inappropriate times of year. This disrupts plant recovery and depletes seed banks. The problem is intensified by invasive alien plant species along the Garden Route, which increase fuel loads and cause hotter, longer-burning fires that destroy both mature plants and seeds. Climate change, unsustainable land use and excessive water abstraction by alien vegetation further worsen these conditions.

Following fires, the loss of plant cover leads to soil erosion, weakening ecosystems and making them more vulnerable to invasion by alien species creating a destructive feedback loop. Wildlife is also affected. While many species are adapted to natural fire cycles, frequent, intense and fast-moving fires in fragmented landscapes reduce escape routes and increase animal mortality.

Reducing the ecological damage of anthropogenic fires requires proactive fire prevention, rapid response capacity and, critically, addressing underlying drivers such as invasive species, land-use practices, water management and climate change.

Ryan Kaye holds an MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Restoration from the University of Antwerp and works as a Sustainability Analyst.
GREF is a public platform for environmental managers and landowners and serves a climate change think tank (grefecsf.co.za)

Issued on behalf of Ryan Kaye