Abstract
The level of understanding of the ecological effects of fires has improved over the past century, but comprehensive information on the practical application of fire remains restricted to a few well-studied areas, and management information is scattered. This article reviews the goals of fire management practices in African savanna-protected areas, and the approaches that have been adopted to achieve them. We identified 15 distinct fire management practices described in 107 papers from 19 African countries. Fire management has evolved in response to changing ecological understanding, as well as the shifting goals of protected areas. Currently, fire management practices can be divided into those that use fire to achieve specific ecological outcomes, those where fire is applied to promote diverse fire patterns across the landscape without necessarily having a specific ecological outcome in mind, and those that use fire to achieve specific, non-ecological or social goals. In larger, heterogeneous protected areas, fire management practices may vary at different sites in order to achieve a range of goals. We compared the effectiveness of each practice in terms of achieving 10 broad goals. These included ecological goals, for example, reversing woody and social goals (e.g. maintaining community relationships).Conservation implications: Fire management remains an important ecosystem process that can be manipulated to achieve particular goals in protected areas. The choice of a particular approach, or approaches, will depend on the circumstances pertaining to a particular protected area, and we provide examples of situations where each practice could be most appropriate.
Highlights
Savannas are characterised by the co-dominance of woody plants and grasses, in which trees that are at least 2 metres (m) tall occur above a grassy layer between 0.5 m and 2 m (Scholes & Walker 1993)
This review has confirmed the widespread use of fire in the management of savannah-protected areas in Africa, reflecting on a growing body of research to evaluate past fire management approaches and to make proposals for novel ways to manage fire in the face of global change
The seven distinct fire management approaches identified here have been used to achieve 10 ecological and socio-economic goals that were sometimes confined to specific time periods and locations (Table 2)
Summary
Savannas are characterised by the co-dominance of woody plants and grasses, in which trees that are at least 2 metres (m) tall occur above a grassy layer between 0.5 m and 2 m (Scholes & Walker 1993). Approaches to fire management have evolved over the past century, and some protected areas have undergone multiple changes in fire management over time (Archibald et al 2017; Van Wilgen et al 2014). These changes came about in response to increases in understanding of the role and impacts of fire in natural ecosystems, as well as to changing societal needs and increasing challenges associated with global change, including climate change, increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and invasion by alien plants (Bond & Midgley 2012; Sala et al 2000). The interest of this review is in conservation management, and the purpose of this study was to identify the various goals of fire http://www.koedoe.co.za
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