Panic

People panic in the event of a snakebite. The victim panics – so much so that he or she may get nauseous and start vomiting; those in attendance panic and make poor decisions as to applying first aid and assisting the victim; even doctors panic when faced with an emergency – several have called me, desperate for advice. So, when young Crawford Coulson walked into my office one Saturday morning in the Valley of a Thousand Hills (near Durban, South Africa) with a terrified look on his face and said, “A black mamba has just bitten me,” I knew I had to think fast.

I did not doubt that Crawford knew what he was talking about – he was the snake park curator at Assagai Safari Park, a crocodile and snake park in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. Although it may take 3 – 16 hours for mamba venom to kill an adult, there are many cases where the victim has died within an hour.

“I have just been bitten by a black mamba”

We were about a thirty-minute drive from Addington Hospital in Durban, and Crawford clearly had a severe bite – the snake bit him on the back of the calf, and its fangs got stuck for several seconds. Within minutes Crawford complained that his lips were going numb. I got him into a vehicle and ran to the restaurant for help, but it was chaotic with tourists that had just emerged from two luxury buses. I drove to the owner’s house about 100 meters up the driveway, but it was empty – they had all gone shopping.

I sped off for Addington Hospital with the little BMW drifting from side to side as I took the corners on the highway. After fifteen minutes, Crawford was going downhill fast. He was sweating profusely, finding it difficult to keep his head up, and his speech was intermittent and slurred. I contemplated stopping at the closer Westville Hospital but knew they did not have a trauma unit, and I was not sure whether doctors would be available to deal with a snakebite emergency. I resolved to head for Addington, the main snakebite hospital in Durban at the time. The road was busy, as it is most Saturday mornings; I had my emergency lights on, and I was hooting to usher vehicles out of the way. As I entered Durban off the Western freeway, I blew the fuse on the hooter and had to worm through the traffic.

Crawford survived the bite without antivenom

As I pulled into Addington, Crawford was slipping into unconsciousness, and he was rushed into I.C.U. There was chaos and panic as they had no antivenom. But eleven hours later, after excellent hospital care, Crawford was out of danger, and he returned to work within a few days.

Miraculously, by being placed on a ventilator, Crawford survived the bite without antivenom.

The major effect of neurotoxic envenomation is that the venom paralysis the chest muscles and the victim stops breathing. But if the patient is properly ventilated, he or she may survive the bite without antivenom as the body eventually breaks down the venom – I stress, may survive; this is risky and does not always work.

Mamba bites are few and far between in South Africa, and in most years we hear of just a dozen bites or so. This deadly snake with its fearsome reputation and supposedly aggressive nature is far from the deadly attacker that people imagine; the black mamba is in fact a very shy and elusive snake that is quick to escape when disturbed. But if cornered or threatened without hope for escape, it will bite and may even deliver multiple bites.

In Crawford’s case, the snake was coiled up in the morning sun and fast asleep when he accidentally stepped onto it. About two weeks later I caught a 2.5metre black mamba a few paces from where Crawford was bitten.

In Southern Africa, snakebite is a reality that many people have to deal with. There are over 170 different types of snakes in the region and of them, about 20 are potentially deadly. In the region of 7,000 snakebites are recorded annually, with close on 50 fatalities.

The main snakebite culprits

Cytotoxic venom

The vast majority of snakebites are inflicted by snakes with cytotoxic venom. Cytotoxic venom, though extremely destructive to tissue, seldom causes fatalities, and most victims recover quite quickly, although some require multiple operations to counter the devastating effects of the destructive venom on body tissue.

The most common snakes responsible for bites are:

Other snakes with predominantly cytotoxic venom include:

Symptoms include:
– severe pain.
– excessive swelling.
– in many cases, blisters followed by necrosis (death of body tissue).

Neurotoxic venom
The two snakes that cause the most fatal bites are the black mamba and the Cape cobra. Their venom is potently neurotoxic and fast-acting.

Symptoms include:
– Nausea.
– Slurred speech.
– Ptosis (drooping or falling of the upper or lower eyelid).
– Progressive weakness.
– Eventual paralysis of chest muscles causes difficulty in breathing and death. In severe cases, victims struggle to breathe within 20 minutes, but in untreated cases, death could take about 4 – 16 hours.

Haemotoxic venom
Two of Southern Africa’s snakes, the boomslang and the twig or vine snake, have haemotoxic venom, affecting the blood clotting mechanism. Fortunately, both these snakes are placid and seldom bite unless captured or accidentally stepped on. One or two boomslang bites are reported yearly, and virtually all twig snake victims are snake handlers.

Symptoms include:
– Victims may experience no symptoms for several hours after a bite, but eventually, blood starts oozing from the fang punctures.
– This is followed by a bleeding nose, bleeding from the mucous membrane and eventually massive internal haemorrhaging. This could take a day or two and, in untreated cases, a slow and painful death.

Preventing snakebite

Most snakebites occur during warm wet summer nights from January to March/April.
Should you encounter any snake, back off and move away. Five metres or more from any snake is a safe distance, and it is a myth that snakes chase after people. Even the deadly black mamba never chases people and avoids confrontations unless cornered. It is not an aggressive snake and seldom accounts for bites.

– Wear adequate boots when in the field.
– Never handle any snake, regardless of size (some snakes play dead).
– Use a torch when walking at night.
– Keep your tent zipped closed at all times when camping.

In the event of a snakebite

In the event of a snakebite, it is best to keep the victim calm and rapidly, but safely, transport them to the closest hospital with a trauma unit.

Do not do any of the following:
– Never cut or try to suck the venom out. It does not work, and you will do more damage than good.
– Never apply a tourniquet. Arterial tourniquets do not slow the rate at which venom is absorbed and often do far more damage than good.
– Do not apply ice or heat; never give the victim alcohol.
– Forget about traditional remedies, including Condy’s crystals and charcoal – no traditional remedies help for snakebite.
– Never inject antivenom, cortisone or antihistamine. Antivenom is highly effective when required and must be administered by a medical doctor in a hospital environment. Many people are allergic to antivenom (it is made from horse blood), which may result in anaphylaxis in severe cases. This critical medical condition will require urgent medical intervention by a doctor.

The biggest danger is a neurotoxic bite that affects breathing

The first aid options for snakebites are limited, and victims must be transported to a hospital urgently. The biggest danger is a neurotoxic bite that affects breathing. If you are several hours from a hospital and have pressure bandages (crepe bandages), and you are quite sure it was a mamba or cobra bite, you can apply the pressure bandages around the limb from the bite towards the heart as tight as you would for a sprained ankle. This puts pressure on the lymphatic system and may delay the rate at which venom is spread through the body. But the pressure bandage should not be used for cytotoxic venoms with a lot of swelling.

Otherwise, one can assist-breathe the patient or resort to C.P.R., but that is seldom effective for more than 15-20 minutes. Never attempt mouth-to-mouth resuscitation without a face mask – you do not want to swallow someone else’s bodily fluids. The most effective form of first aid in serious bites from snakes with neurotoxic venom is using a bag valve mask (BVM) which could be life-saving. But one would need some training in using a BVM – something worth considering if you are far away from medical help or often venture into the bush.

The African Snakebite Institute provides a variety of snake awareness and first aid for snakebite courses. More details on snakebite are available in the book Snakes and Snakebite in Southern Africa and the downloadable app: Snakebite First Aid Africa.

About the author

Johan Marais has devoted most of his life to his favourite hobby – reptiles. He grew up in Durban, where he encountered common reptiles regularly. In his early twenties, he worked at the Fitzsimons Snake Park in Durban and then moved up to the Transvaal Snake Park in Halfway House where he worked as curator for three years followed by about six years farming crocodiles. During this time, he was an active member of the Crocodile Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Over the years Johan has conducted numerous reptile field trips with friends and scientists either in search of specific reptiles or conducting reptile surveys. Today he spends most of his time lecturing on reptiles, training people to handle snakes safely, conducting field trips, photographing reptiles and talking on the corporate circuit.

‘What’s great about the ocean is that you swim a hundred and fifty meters from the shore, and you feel vulnerable – you are in the wilderness,’ says Craig Foster. Feeling vulnerable is something most modern humans try to avoid, but it would have been a regular part of our ancestors’ lives, and it draws Craig into the cold waters of South Africa’s False Bay. He has been exploring these waters every day for four years, discovering previously unknown species and inspiring scientists and children alike to reconnect with the wild.
The Sea Change Project he is developing is multidimensional, involving film, photography and storytelling in live presentations, mobile exhibitions, and an expansive website. ‘The basis of it is that when you immerse in nature as deeply as you can, there’s this sea change – or transformation – that takes place because we are basically aligning ourselves with our original design,’ says Craig. ‘All those neural networks in the brain start functioning – all those things that activate primal joy. The water is a more extreme environment than land. You are inside water.’

By immersing yourself in nature you activate primal joy

I felt vulnerable, just sticking my toe in the cold water. Craig invited me to join him, his young son Tom and Ross Frylinck for a dive in False Bay. Ross is the director of surf lifestyle website Wavescape and a writer and director for Sea Change.
A prerequisite to diving with Craig is not wearing a wetsuit. ‘I want to get into the mind of Stone Age Man. I want to see how they saw things when they hunted in the ocean.’
We jumped from the rocks, and, before I could surface and take my first shaky breath, Craig, Tom, and Ross were swimming to the edge of the Kelp Forest. Soon they were motioning for me to join them, ‘Stingray! Come and see this.’ But I couldn’t pry myself from the shallows where I struggled to breathe. I needed time to adjust to the cold, and when I got there, the stingray was gone. ‘It was huge, about four meters,’ said Craig happily, adding how unusual it was to see it here in the kelp. But I wasn’t disappointed because by swimming down in search of the stingray, I entered a world where I felt cold, vulnerable, and ecstatic.
Later, from the shore, Ros and Tom noticed a great white shark taking some prey some 50 meters off the kelp line. Craig realised this was why the stingray and some seals had come into the kelp, but because the water was clear we were not threatened by the shark as it does not identify humans as prey.

Foster, at a young age, was obsessed with the intertidal zone. He grew up along the coast in his family’s wooden bungalow, the lower level of which was below the high watermark. ‘In the big Atlantic storms, we had to board up the windows. The bottom of the house would often fill up with seawater.’
He and his brother were walking and diving along the coast by age three. In those days, there was no supervision. There was no iPad. They would spend whole days exploring the tidal pools and kelp forests. Their food was what the ocean provided, and they could survive like that by the age of six.

Sea Change reawakens the first African coastal family

This deeply influenced Craig; as an adult, he wanted to learn more. But no more coastal hunters were left around False Bay, and no mentors to guide the brothers through the finer arts of wilderness survival. ‘That’s what drew me away from the ocean to the Kalahari, where the San are the masters of wilderness survival.’ The Foster brothers spent three years filming their celebrated documentary The Great Dance: A Hunter’s Story there.
After a long series of films, Craig was burnt out. His way to recovery was to return to the ocean, so he moved to Simons Town, where he swam daily, gradually recovering and reconnecting with the wild in False Bay.
During that time, Canadian anthropologist and filmmaker Niobe Thompson, who had seen The Great Dance, and was creating a human origins series, approached Craig and asked him to recreate and film the first African coastal family. It turned out to be one of the foundations for the Sea Change Project.

Craig was determined to be completely faithful in recreating a 100,000-year-old Stone Age family and collaborated with archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood and ethno-ecologist Tony Cunningham. ‘I got a real feeling for original existence along the coast – a time when Homo sapiens were innovating at an incredible level.’

He describes evidence of rock art discovered by Henshilwood in Blombos cave near Stillbaai dated to 77,000 years ago, which makes it about 40,000 years older than the oldest art in Europe. Also found at Blombos is an abalone shell containing a mixture of red ochre, bone and charcoal. It is estimated to be about 100,000 years old, making it the oldest human-made container ever found and the world’s oldest chemical mixture for adornment. He believes that the carpet of low-tide kelp would have been the environment where we first learned how to wade, swim and eventually dive by following rich food sources, like abalone and crayfish, deeper into the ocean. ‘People might shoot me down, but I think this time was when humans lived at their highest potential.’

Thompson expected him to work on the project for six weeks, but Craig spent eight months creating the family with local fishing people who had a strong connection with the ocean.
Donovan van der Heyden is one of them. A traditional fisherman and community leader, Donovan is active in establishing the rights of traditional fishermen. As resources dwindle due to commercial fishing and poaching, his community is under pressure. ‘Youngsters are being lured into poaching by the quick money,’ he says. ‘I want to be able to educate them about the importance of conserving wildlife and remind them of our spiritual connection with the ocean.’ In working with Craig in recreating our roots, Donovan has rekindled his connection with the ocean and feels the Sea Change Project can be integral in his quest to teach the youth about their marine heritage and how to conserve it.

‘There’s a strange thing that happens to our bodies when it comes to cold water – with immersion and holding our breath. Everything is fast-tracked,’ says Craig.
I recognised this as I swam through the kelp forest, pulling myself down on long kelp stems to reach the rocky floor, holding my breath for longer as I dived deeper. The reward was a clarity of vision, a sharpening of the senses. While my inner core kept itself warm, my skin took on the temperature of the water. After a short while, I did not feel cold; I just felt like I was part of it. We swam for about 45 minutes, flying through the Kelp forest between myriad fish, diving down to greet octopus and crabs and anemones and sea urchins of every colour imaginable.

When you become cold-adapted you feel more human

‘We are supposed to be cold-adapted as humans, but today we are programmed to keep warm – put on our jackets when there’s a chill – but it’s not natural. When you become cold-adapted, your hormonal system changes; your immune system strengthens. There’s a transformation on many levels. We don’t step back into the original design, but some of that criterion is fulfilled. Ultimately you feel more human,’ says Craig. ‘Some of the kids involved in this project have gone home to do ice baths, and their parents ban them from doing it. So they sneak cold showers. It’s hard to stay cold in our mad world!’
One of those kids is 12-year-old Epiphany Stransham-Ford. Her father went diving with Craig and afterwards encouraged Epiphany to join them. ‘My dad thought it was the most incredible experience, and he knew how much I loved animals, so he suggested I go along too,’ she explains. Since then, Epiphany has become one of the ambassadors of Sea Change.

‘I was never interested in marine life before. I wanted to be a wildlife veterinarian and work in the bush. But when I went diving with Craig, that changed,’ she says. ‘My first dive wasn’t great, but on my second dive, I opened up. I totally relaxed and began appreciating the beauty of the surroundings.’
By her own initiative, Epiphany has been working with the Sea Change Project and the conservation organisation Mission Blue, headed up by renowned Ocean Explorer Dr Sylvia Earle. Mission Blue has designated Hope Spots along the globe’s shores – places critical to the ocean’s health – and False Bay is one of them. Through her learning and ocean experience, Epiphany now talks at schools where she inspires kids to conserve the ocean.

Aided by his heightened senses and the frequency with which he explores the water near his home, Craig started noticing creatures not recorded in guidebooks. He reached out to Emeritus Professor Charles Griffiths to help identify them. Griffiths headed up the marine biology team at the University of Cape Town for 25 years and is one of the authors of Two Oceans, A Guide to Marine Life of Southern Africa. He has also become a mentor to Craig, who holds him in the highest esteem for the valuable expertise and time he has given to the project.
‘Craig has a particular style of photography, and he’s photographed some remarkable things,’ says Griffiths. ‘What Craig does is valuable because he lives on the shore and often dives in the same places. For example, if Craig sees a snail laying a group of eggs and goes back every day to observe and document it, we can learn an extraordinary amount from it. As scientists, we don’t often have the time and resources to do that.’

One of Craig’s most remarkable observations is the never before seen behaviour of cuttlefish, which Griffiths and marine biology student Jannes Landschoff are studying. Its behaviour is unique and has not been documented until now.
To evade predators, the cuttlefish adapts its skin colour, texture and body shape to mimic other creatures, such as a whelk (sea snail), which it lies beside and mirrors, as seen in the image above. When under threat, instead of swimming away and drawing attention to itself, the cuttlefish can also use its tentacles to mimic the legs of a hermit crab, fooling predators by slowly walking away like a crab.
Craig joins Charles and Jannes to explore and share information as often as possible. Jannes, who is originally from the north of Germany, is, as he says, naturally cold-adapted.

‘The marine life on the coast here is so diverse,’ says Jannes. ‘Bays are unusual along this part of Africa’s coast, and the life in False Bay is so rich because it is well sheltered. It’s also between two oceans where you have warm and cold currents meet.’
Much of the sea life has been wiped out on the coasts of Europe, so for Jannes, it is thrilling to study here, and Craig enhances that experience for him. ‘Craig is so in tune with nature. It gives me a completely different approach. When I first met Craig, I thought he was either a genius or completely mad. I came to realise he is both,’ laughs Jannes. ‘I don’t think he is fully aware of his amazing work, and I don’t know anybody with a similar approach. The spiritual philosophy behind what Craig does makes it translatable to an audience. I’m not religious; I guess if I have spirituality, it has always been science, and Craig’s philosophy is something I can tune into.’

‘There are many more animals in the water than there are on land,’ says Craig. ‘Big animals are approaching you. On land, that doesn’t happen because they’ve had millions of years to become afraid of us. But we never dominated water, so the animals aren’t scared of you. They often make contact if they don’t sense you are a threat. That’s why you’ve got to relax in the water.’
I couldn’t relax when Ross handed me a small cat shark. It was gently ensconced in his hands as he swam up to me, but I was wary so as he handed it to me, it became catatonic, coiling in on itself suddenly and sinking to the ocean floor. Once it sensed no further threat, it uncoiled and swam off again. I definitely needed to relax. And I decided the best way to do that was to give myself to the water.

‘In that cold water, it was a feeling of warmth’

Craig introduced me to a crab that, after resting for a while on my hands where we could study each other, climbed along my arm and seated itself there as I swam along like a steward. It made me feel relaxed, and welcome. It would have stayed there for longer if I hadn’t returned it to the ocean floor. Soon after, Craig brought an octopus up to greet me. He put it into my open hands, where it coiled its tentacles gently around my arms and sat facing me. I watched its bulbous head expand with every breath, its skin changing colour from dark purple to light pink, its eyes looking into mine.
‘It can happen anywhere – you can make these relationships with nature on land and in water,’ says Craig. ‘When you give an animal your attention, it can feel it. Imagine doing that with hundreds of species the whole time – a reciprocal bonding between you and nature. This is what the San call the ropes to God. It’s part of our psychological makeup. Imagine just cutting that off.’
The octopus and I stared at each other for a while. It’s the closest I have ever felt to nature. In that cold water, it was a feeling of warmth. Then it calmly swam away, and I followed it for a while like it was tugging me along.

Contributor

ANTON CRONE quit the crazy-wonderful world of advertising to travel the world, sometimes working, and drifting. Along the way, he unearthed a passion for Africa’s stories – not the sometimes hysterical news agency headlines we all feed off, but the real stories. Anton strongly empathises with Africa’s people and their need to meet daily requirements, often in remote, environmentally hostile areas cohabitated by Africa’s free-roaming animals.

Walking through the ashes of Table Mountain National Park after last week’s monumental fire, I didn’t expect to see it as a landscape teeming with life, and yet it was. The sensation was one mixed with awe at the devastation and wonder at the nature that has survived or is already emerging. The fire raged through 5,500 hectares of the Cape Peninsula for five days with strong winds and extreme temperatures making it difficult for firefighters to control. Table Mountain National Park was by far the most affected area, a pristine environment which is home to about 2,000 species of plants – more than the entire British Isles.
But as I walked between the blackened fynbos on Silvermine, I saw a rock kestrel hovering above, no doubt tracking a rodent exposed by the lack of foliage; succulent green shoots pushed up through the ash at my feet, and pink proteas were poised to blossom at the end of roasted stems.

Fire is a rebirth for the ecosystem, without which the system winds down and dies

Christian Boix, teamAG’s safari director and resident ornithologist, met up with me after walking in the opposite direction, towards Muizenberg. He had seen a peregrine falcon and an African marsh harrier, the latter unusual in this region, probably having flown in to capitalise on vulnerable prey. White-necked ravens had also arrived to scavenge and clean up the show. He showed me pictures of a live tortoise – a relief from the images of dead ones too encumbered to escape the flames – and he showed me insects working the flowers and millions of seeds which have been scattered after the flames.
‘When we get a fire like this, our instinctual reaction is to feel a lot of sadness for losing our flora and fauna. But this flora is adapted to burn; it needs to burn to live,’ said Dr Adam West from the Department of Biological Sciences at UCT in a radio interview last week. ‘If fynbos doesn’t burn every 15 years or so, we lose a lot of species, we lose a lot of diversity from the system, and the system effectively starts to wind down and die. Fire is really important. It’s really a rebirth for the ecosystem.’
I’m excited at the opportunity to witness this rebirth: not far beneath the soil, dormant seeds triggered by the heat await the coming rains; burrowing animals and insects are re-emerging, and birds are flying in to claim them. Ants scurry to reach seeds they will bury for food, aiding germination, and rodents race to beat the ants to it. But this is my layman’s sense of it.

The Lottery of Fire

As fynbos specialist Prof. Richard Cowling explains, a big lottery is currently at play. ‘There’s a lot of sorting going on right now in how fynbos regenerates. We’ve had a fire that raged over four or five days, and in some places, the wind-driven fire went into old, dense bush. The intensity would have been phenomenal. That would have had a very different effect on regeneration to another area where the veld was less dense, and the fire was burning on a cool day.’ Indeed one of the fire days was cooler and even brought some rain. In contrast, on the day before, Cape Town recorded its hottest temperature in 100 years, at 42 degrees celsius.

‘A really hot fire stimulates germination of your large species’ seeds, like pincushions and buchus, that have been buried in the soil. Some might have been waiting for 50 years,’ he adds, recounting the story of a species thought extinct that suddenly re-emerged after an intensely hot fire. ‘But your smaller seeded species, your ericas and daisies, get absolutely singed by this heat, and that is why fynbos is so bogglingly diverse: each fire is unique in its effect on the species. It’s a lottery, a random process. You can’t predict what the fire is going to be like. And what happens after the fire is so important.’
The timing of this latest fire has been perfect for many of the plants, occurring as it did just before the rainy season. The taller plants like proteas and leucadendrons that release seeds after the fire are favoured if the rains arrive soon. But if the fire had occurred in September, for example, these seeds would lie on the soil surface right through the summer, where they can be scattered by wind and eaten by rodents.

The plants gamble with their seeds. Sometimes they hit it big, sometimes they don’t

‘If we get good winter rains starting in April, then that complement will germinate well. But that has another implication. You get a really dense over-story of proteas and leucadendron which selectively suppresses the plants in the understory.’ This shading out of smaller plants means it is cooler there, and plants producing seeds dispersed and buried by ants will suffer because ants don’t venture into cool areas. Conversely, rodents like living under proteas because it is cool; it provides them with shelter from raptors and food in the way of seeds. So when the next fire comes, even if it is intensely hot, there are not enough of those hard seeds available for germination.
‘Ultimately, this is a complex process,’ says Cowling. ‘The plants gamble with their seeds. Sometimes they hit it big, sometimes they don’t, and there’s a local crash in the population. It’s that up and down in populations with each fire that enables this huge number of species to coexist in this small region of the Cape Peninsula.’

The Winners and Losers

This “gamble” applies to flora, insects, and animals that thrive on the fynbos in all its incredible diversity.
‘Fire takes everything down to its bold, most naked competitive arena. It’s a fight for limited resources,’ says Dr Phoebe Barnard of the Birds & Environmental Change Program at the South African National Biodiversity Institute.
She explains that birds are going into the burnt area as opportunists, birds of prey like buzzards and goshawks, which capitalise on vulnerable mammals, and herons and hadedas, which capitalise on insects. Then some birds can feed for a long time in “roasted” areas, like cape canaries which feed on the seeds of leucodendron bushes, often roasted in their little cones. ‘I suppose it’s like having toasted sunflower seeds,’ she adds.

Some birds have evolved to respond to fire by making use of nectar resources elsewhere

‘You’ve got winners and losers in a frequent fire. The winners tend to be some of the fynbos endemic species like the Cape rock-jumper. Birds like them do very well because fire exposes the ground, the birds clean up any insects injured or killed by the fire, and for the next four or five years, they’ve got a relatively open habitat of newly growing fynbos. One of the losers might be something like the Cape sugarbird, which requires mature proteas and Proteoideae, such as pincushions, to be able to drink nectar. They cannot rely on things that come up in the new fire age, so they have to go elsewhere.’
Barnard studies the movement of fynbos endemic bird species in such events. Each of the six endemic fynbos bird species has a different movement strategy. Some of these birds hang around in their territories, like the orange-breasted sunbird, and they are very vulnerable to fire. But the Cape sugarbirds move on, sometimes very long distances. Like them, some birds have evolved to respond to large-scale fire by using nectar resources elsewhere; others are less evolved in that way.

They have found that over the past 10 or 15 years, more birds have been moving down into the suburbs in the event of a fire. The sugarbird has an unfortunate name as the association might encourage more people to place sugar water feeders in their gardens after fires to help the birds. ‘I have mixed feelings about this,’ says Barnard. ‘I feel the way people provide resources for wildlife is, on the whole, a negative thing because it creates a dependency. Doing so alters movement patterns, survival patterns, health and disease vulnerability.’ Barnard stresses that she is not talking only about fynbos endemic birds but species in general. ‘But at the same time,’ she says, ‘we have manipulated the area around natural fynbos, and we have caused more fires than is natural, so we cannot help but try to compensate by providing food in the event of such a large scale fire.’

What you can do to protect species in the event of fire:

In the Cape Town suburbs, Barnard encourages people to plant more locally indigenous water-bearing and flowering species for the long term. Only if they cannot, and only in the short term, should people provide nectar bottles and feeders for birds, making sure not to provide artificial sweeteners of any kind, including xylitol, because they can kill sugarbirds.
West says we can help in the event of a fire by protecting the natural system, such as stopping the encroachment of houses into the fynbos and stopping the propagation of alien vegetation that adds significant fuel to the fire and risks it running completely out of control.
Fynbos involves thousands of species. It’s not just proteas; it’s birds, insects, reptiles and mammals. ‘Some are winners, and some are losers, but we must cater for all of them by keeping a mosaic in the landscape,’ says Barnard. This ideal would mean a landscape of fynbos at differing cycles of fire age so that all species can thrive by moving easily between habitats.

The ideal is a mosaic landscape of fynbos at differing cycles of fire age

But we humans are a crucial species. The fynbos has survived for more than 3 million years. Lightning would have been the key factor in starting fires back then, and humans have been starting fires here for at least 200,000 years. You can say we are part of the system. But a fire that occurs too frequently or in the wrong season means that plants do not have time to seed or the seeds are wasted, eliminating species, including plants, birds, insects, reptiles and mammals. It’s a heady responsibility for our species.
I often speed over Silvermine on my way somewhere else, ignorant of the incredible ecosystem on either side of the road. But I will spend more time here, and I look forward to seeing new life take hold. One of the most rewarding sights on Silvermine was seeing a different aspect of life in the ashes: two young boys clearing up the broken bottles that were once hidden by the undergrowth, now revealed by the flames.

Dedicated to all the firefighters and volunteers who worked tirelessly to contain the blaze, and to the memories of helicopter pilot Willem “Bees” Marais and firefighter Nazeem Davies who died in service to the Cape of Good Hope.

 

Contributors

ANTON CRONE quit the crazy-wonderful world of advertising to travel the world, sometimes working, and drifting. Along the way, he unearthed a passion for Africa’s stories – not the sometimes hysterical news agency headlines we all feed off, but the real stories. Anton has a strong empathy with Africa’s people and their need to meet daily requirements, often in remote, environmentally hostile areas cohabitated by Africa’s free-roaming animals.

CHRISTIAN BOIX left his native Spain, its great food, siestas and fiestas. He now works in teamAG – as a safari consultant and Director of the company.