Cherryflava

‘Tis the season to be wary

Posted on 19. Dec, 2007 by Jonathan Cherry in Advertising

It’s the festive season, and in the Cape it’s also fire season. With soaring temperatures and tinder dry alien vegetation just waiting for a British tourist to flick a burning cigarette butt at it, the incidence of ‘Malibu-style’ mountain fires is real and sadly common.

To help raise awareness around forest fire prevention, new local agency The Animal Farm commissioned  ‘The carpenters shop’, an NGO setup to teach woodwork skills to the homeless and unemployed, to carve 65 fire extinguishers from alien trees.

It’s the alien trees that drink all the water, suck up all the light and most of all spread their seed when they burn.

‘Our hope was to create a general awareness around fire prevention by installing these extinguishers, mounted to alien trees, across all major forests and walkways in Cape Town.

All 65 extinguishers were installed over three days spanning across the entire table mountain national park, from Signal Hill to Kalk Bay.’

Great idea – and yes, it will be interesting to see how long they stay on the trees. Lets just hope that they’ll not removed and used to mug hikers. [thanks Warren]