Veldt Fires: February 2015

the major causes of veld fires is ussually smoking and irresponsibly throwing away the stub when it is still smoking. this ussually happens in summer when the grass is dry. dry grass is very flammable that it can easily be burnt. the other thing is hunting. some people use burning the bush as a way of hunting especially small animals. this will destroy the whole veld and also affect other animals which were not the target.

The earliest humans began to use fire a million years ago, and modern humans have been using veldfires for hunting and for managing their environment for possibly hundreds of thousands of years. We continue to use fire in veld and forest, to manage grazing and habitats, and As our rural areas have been developed, especially through plantation forests and other plantations such as sugarcane, the risk of losses in fires has increased. As our people have become more urbanised, fewer of us understand veldfires, and so the chance of our starting them or becoming victims to fires has increased.as a measure to help prevent uncontrolled fires.

the ghe oint study by the Department of Environmental Sciences, Bindura University of Science Education and Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering, University of Zimbabwe, traces the prominence of the vice to the land reform programme.
This means that poachers and new farmers are major drivers of these uncontrollable infernos.
The study noted that prior to the land reform programme commercial farmers occupied about 16 million hectares, resettlement farmers 3,6m ha, small-scale commercial farmers 1,4m ha and State farms 0,1m ha.
“In 2000, the Government initiated a land reform programme to acquire 12,4m ha of the 16m ha in large-scale agriculture to create two new categories of farming subsectors, namely A1 and A2 farms. A total of 4,1m ha model A1 farms (average 5 ha), 3,5m ha model A2 farms (average, 318 ha per farmer) were established under the land reform programme.
“However, of late there has been an increase in the incidences of uncontrolled veld fires which have inflicted substantial damage to agricultural land, national parks, indigenous forests, commercial timber plantations, rangelands and communal grazing areas. The recent increase in fire incidences has been attributed to newly resettled smallholder farmers.
“The fast track land reform programme, which started in 2000, resulted in an upsurge in veld fire incidents due to poor land clearing methods by the more than 300 000 resettled small holder farmers,” noted the study published in 2013.

oint study by the Department of Environmental Sciences, Bindura University of Science Education and Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering, University of Zimbabwe, traces the prominence of the vice to the land reform programme.
This means that poachers and new farmers are major drivers of these uncontrollable infernos.
The study noted that prior to the land reform programme commercial farmers occupied about 16 million hectares, resettlement farmers 3,6m ha, small-scale commercial farmers 1,4m ha and State farms 0,1m ha.
“In 2000, the Government initiated a land reform programme to acquire 12,4m ha of the 16m ha in large-scale agriculture to create two new categories of farming subsectors, namely A1 and A2 farms. A total of 4,1m ha model A1 farms (average 5 ha), 3,5m ha model A2 farms (average, 318 ha per farmer) were established under the land reform programme.
“However, of late there has been an increase in the incidences of uncontrolled veld fires which have inflicted substantial damage to agricultural land, national parks, indigenous forests, commercial timber plantations, rangelands and communal grazing areas. The recent increase in fire incidences has been attributed to newly resettled smallholder farmers.
“The fast track land reform programme, which started in 2000, resulted in an upsurge in veld fire incidents due to poor land clearing methods by the more than 300 000 resettled small holder farmers,” noted the study published in 2013.

A joint study by the Department of Environmental Sciences, Bindura University of Science Education and Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering, University of Zimbabwe, traces the prominence of the vice to the land reform programme.
This means that poachers and new farmers are major drivers of these uncontrollable infernos.
The study noted that prior to the land reform programme commercial farmers occupied about 16 million hectares, resettlement farmers 3,6m ha, small-scale commercial farmers 1,4m ha and State farms 0,1m ha.
“In 2000, the Government initiated a land reform programme to acquire 12,4m ha of the 16m ha in large-scale agriculture to create two new categories of farming subsectors, namely A1 and A2 farms. A total of 4,1m ha model A1 farms (average 5 ha), 3,5m ha model A2 farms (average, 318 ha per farmer) were established under the land reform programme.
“However, of late there has been an increase in the incidences of uncontrolled veld fires which have inflicted substantial damage to agricultural land, national parks, indigenous forests, commercial timber plantations, rangelands and communal grazing areas. The recent increase in fire incidences has been attributed to newly resettled smallholder farmers.
“The fast track land reform programme, which started in 2000, resulted in an upsurge in veld fire incidents due to poor land clearing methods by the more than 300 000 resettled small holder farmers,” noted the study published in 2013.

The major drivers include fires used for hunting, improving grazing, early burning or back burning to reduce the fuel load and negative impact of wild fires, creation of fire breaks, arson and smoking out bees during harvesting of wild honey.
Other deliberate causes include cooking, waste dumps, and carelessness such as throwing out lit cigarettes, fires to flush out game, fires to please the rain gods particularly when there is an impending drought and safari hunters who deliberately start or leave campfires unextinguished.
As a result burning has become the single largest contributor to greenhouse gases during the dry season in Zimbabwe and in the region.
More needs to be done to protect the environment by reminding the farmers and poachers of the long term effect of their deliberate actions.
Uncontrolled fires are a threat to the bio-physical, social and economic environment because of their trail of destruction and direct impact on all sectors of the economy.
- See more at: http://www.manicapost.com/rampaging-veld-fires-in-manicaland-cause-for-concern/#sthash.2jaPrX3W.dpuf

As many as 90 percent of wildland fires in the United States are caused by humans. Some human-caused fires result from campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, negligently discarded cigarettes and intentional acts of arson. The remaining 10 percent are started by lightning or lava - See more at: http://www.nps.gov/fire/wildland-fire/learning-center/fire-in-depth/wildfire-causes.cfm#sthash.to20KMYx.dpuf