Author: Herman Pieters
9 February 2025 Media Release: New Wetland Strategy Nears Adoption
Media Release: New Wetland Strategy Nears Adoption
9 February 2025
The Garden Route District Municipality (GRDM) is advancing an updated Wetland Strategy and Action Plan (2026 2031) designed to protect, manage and restore the region s wetlands. Wetlands critical ecological infrastructure that supports biodiversity, climate resilience and community well-being.
Access the draft document here: https://tinyurl.com/yc8hfwps
Wetlands within the Garden Route District, which includes globally significant sites such as the Wilderness Lakes Ramsar site and extensive coastal lake systems, provide a range of ecosystem services including:
– water filtration;
– erosion control;
– water storage; and
– clean drinking water supply.
Wetlands are a lifeline for communities because they also support local livelihoods through resources such as medicinal plants, raw materials, fishing, and important recreation and tourism opportunities.
“They are nature’s infrastructure, known to protect us from climate shocks and sustain our communities,” said Dr Nina Viljoen, Head: Environmental Management.
“This updated strategy strengthens how we plan, manage and invest in these systems so that we safeguard their benefits for future generations.”
Why a Strategy Matters
Despite their value, wetlands globally have been historically degraded through urban and agricultural expansion, modification of natural water flows, pollution, and invasive alien plants. Left unmanaged, degradation can lead to loss of services that communities and natural systems rely on. This would force costly engineered solutions to replace what nature provided free of charge.
The 2026-2031 strategy sets out a clear and actionable set of priorities to:
- Increase awareness and understanding of wetland functions and values across government, communities, and development sectors.
- Improve governance and management, aligning with national and provincial wetland laws and environmental frameworks.
- Strengthen partnerships among local municipalities, conservation agencies, and civil society to enhance coordinated wetland protection and restoration.
- Guide on-the-ground actions to rehabilitate degraded wetlands, monitor conditions, and integrate wetland values into land-use planning and climate adaptation efforts.
Next Steps Toward Adoption
Before formal adoption by the GRDM Council, a final stakeholder workshop will be held to refine the strategy and ensure broad alignment with community, sector and government interests. Final adoption is expected to follow this collaborative step, marking an important milestone for long-term environmental planning in the Garden Route.
Picture: Grant Duncan-Smith
ENDS
9 February 2026 Media Release: The Environmental Cost of Human-Caused Fires
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