Parque Nacional da Gorongosa Moçambique

“Cold” Fire Benefits Touted in Community Workshop

Sep 18, 2008 - Gorongosa National Park

In June, 2008, fifteen members from the Mount Gorongosa community of Sadjungira attended a fire training workshop in Gorongosa National Park.  This workshop was offered to local farmers in order to spread the message of fire safety to the communities that live and farm on Mount Gorongosa and to reduce the numbers of uncontrolled fires on the mountain and in the Park.  This was the first fire training that the Gorongosa Restoration Project has offered to communities in the Park’s Sustainable Development Zone (Buffer Zone).  The aim of the initiative is to teach new techniques that will protect people from the dangers of uncontrolled fires, while at the same time preventing further damage to the Gorongosa ecosystem from these fires. 

 Workshop participants display the “flapper”, a common firefighting tool.

The training focused on “cold fires” (fires set before the onset of the dry season) when the grasses are flammable but burn with fires that are “cooler” and easier to manage. Burning with cold fires reduces the amount of fuel (such as dry grass and fallen trees) on parts of the landscape so that in the hottest, driest months of the year, there is little or no combustible material left in these parts for fires to burn. The cold fire technique can be used to create fire breaks around communities so that fires burning out of control during the dry season do not threaten community structures or farms.  It can also be used to clear farm fields and pathways between communities at a time of year when the fires are easier to control and therefore less likely to escape and burn unintended areas. 

Park staff used several years of monitoring data on uncontrolled fires to select the Sadjungira community for this first round of training. Sadjungira community, with a population of 13,621 covers the southeast slope of Mount Gorongosa.  Satellite fire data show that many fires entering Gorongosa National Park originate in the area of this community. 
 

Workshop participant ignites a “cold” fire

In addition, fire affects land use practices on Mount Gorongosa with detrimental results for both the mountain and the Park.  Each year, the two meters of rain that falls on Mount Gorongosa gets soaked up in the Mountain’s wetlands and forests. Slowly, this water is released back into streams and soils, flows downstream, and provides perennial water to the plants and animals across Gorongosa National Park. Fires on Mount Gorongosa’s slopes increase erosion and decrease soil nutrients, which causes farm plots to lose fertility and farmers to need to open new farm plots sooner. This speeds up the slash and burn destruction of the mountain’s forests. Land clearing results in decreased water quality and more unpredictable water quantity in the Park (higher than usual flooding in the wet season, and lower than usual in the dry season). Land conversion using fire also threatens the human communities on the mountain, as homes and other structures are destroyed by uncontrolled fire.
 
Our first step in working with the community was to hold three awareness sessions at the home of the Régulo or traditional community leader. During these meetings, which were attended by a group of traditional leaders from Sadjungira, we explained what a controlled cold fire is, the benefits it can offer over uncontrolled fire, and the ideal timing for setting these fires. During the awareness sessions, we asked the community leaders to select 15 participants who would attend a training about cold fire techniques in the Park. Ultimately, they decided to include people from five different neighborhoods in Sadjungira to best cover the community.

Park fire manager Justino Carlos Davane, one of the workshop instructors, checks progress along the fire line

Participants in the training workshop stayed in the Park for five days.  The sessions covered theory as well practical techniques of managing fires. Participants learned how to use the equipment and the criteria for lighting a fire – wind, humidity, slope, and amount and dryness of vegetation. We also discussed the relationship between low herbivore populations and the risk of fires; with fewer bulk grazers on the landscape, more grass biomass is present on the ground, meaning more fuel for fires. We also explained the reason the Park’s conservation department lights fires when the grass is still green: to prevent fires from burning out of control during the dry season. 

The participants set fires along the airstrip as well as along the road to the Pungue River (where the denser vegetation presented a bigger control challenge) near Chitengo, the Park’s main camp.  During these fires, they practiced using fire swatters, a long-handled tool with thick rubber flaps at the base that smother fires, and to demonstrate other hands-on the techniques learned in the workshop. On the last day, everyone went on a game drive into the Park. This was the first opportunity for most of the participants to enter the Park and learn about its ecosystem and wildlife, and was also a terrific opportunity for Park staff to learn a lot from the community members about the local uses of plants.

At the end of the training, the participants debated how they would follow up what they had learned once they returned to their community. They concluded that they wanted to share their new knowledge of techniques and theory with their community, and decided they could help their neighbors conduct cold fires in groups, as they now recognized it was not safe to light a fire alone. The participants had meetings in their community to share their experience. 

Community members meet to discuss the importance of cold fire for protecting their community

They have also joined efforts with the Provincial Directorate for the Coordination of Environmental Action (DPCAA) and have received help from this agency to be able to spread their message. The DPCAA has met with the 15 participants and has agreed to help the communities to buy fire equipment.  DPCAA has also pledged to communicate the message of fire safety to the community.

The Gorongosa Restoration Project will continue to work with Sadjungira and other communities to follow up this initial training. A priority is to conduct additional workshops and trainings in the communities (rather than at the Park) and to help people implement cold fires in the area around their machambas (garden plots). Recent severe fire incidents on the mountain increase our commitment to helping community members build their skills in order to better be able to protect their communities and the ecosystems of Gorongosa.

 Sebastão Tomé, leader of the Park’s Wildlife Sanctuary management team, works with community members during the workshop.