Cape Town's iconic Table Mountain and the surrounding peninsula has been a crucible for attempts to integrate the social and ecological dimensions of wild fire. This environmental history of humans and wildfire outlines these interactions from the practices of Khoikhoi herders to the conflagrations of January 2000. The region's unique, famously diverse fynbos vegetation has been transformed since European colonial settlement, through urbanisation and biological modifications, both intentional (forestry) and unintentional (biological invasions). In all the diverse visions people have formed for Table Mountain, aesthetic and utilitarian, fire has been regarded as a central problem. This book shows how scientific understandings of fire in fynbos developed slowly in the face of strong prejudices. Human impacts were intensified in the twentieth century, which provides the temporal focus for the book. The disjunctures between popular perception, expert knowledge, policy and management are explored, and the book supplements existing short-term scientific data with proxies on fire incidence trends recovered from historical records.

Autorentext

Simon Pooley is Lambert Lecturer in Environment, Department of Geography, Birkbeck University of London, UK. He has a D.Phil in Environmental History (University of Oxford) and has published on wildfire, biological invasions, crocodilian conservation, human-wildlife conflicts and doing interdisciplinary research, in several books and the major environmental history and conservation science journals.

Inhalt
Introduction PART I: FIRE AT THE CAPE FROM PREHISTORY TO 1900 1. Fire at the Cape: From Prehistory to 1795 2. Fire at the Cape: British Colonial Rule, 17951900 PART II: FYNBOS AND FIRE RESEARCH MANAGEMENT, C.190099 3. Science, Management, and Fire in fynbos: 190045 4. Science, Management, and Fire in fynbos: 194599 PART III: FIRE ON THE CAPE PENINSULA, 19002000 5. Fire Geography and Urbanisation on the Cape Peninsula 6. Conserving Table Mountain 7. Afforestation, Plant Invasions and Fire 8. Socio-Economic Causes of Fires: Population, Utilisation and Recreation 9. Fire on the Cape Peninsula, 19002000 Conclusion Appendix 1: Cape Peninsula vegetation Appendix 2: Fire Causes