As fires continue to flare up near Gansbaai, the community and conservation are also pulling through strong.
Overstrand, South Africa (03 November 2025) – Fires continue to flare in Gansbaai. Firefighters, volunteers, and landowners have endured a week of it. Battling a blaze that has swept through more than 1700 hectares of precious land in the Overstrand.
According to the Overstrand Municipality’s Day 7 update, flare-ups are still being contained, and a new fire reported along the R43 near Duineveld Pub has forced road closures between Gansbaai and Pearly Beach. Crews are still focused on keeping lives, property, and biodiversity safe.
But there is good news too.
The conservation non-profit Greenpop has shared a cautious but hopeful update with everyone after their desperate plea for help this week.
The organisation’s vital forest restoration sites in the Uilenkraal Valley were directly threatened and the situation was stark, but thanks to incredible efforts from the team and decades of fire preparation, a significant amount of damage has been curbed. The team are still active to fight inevitable flares.
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“Due to the natural strength and resilience of indigenous forests, the magnificent old-growth Platbos and Bodhi Forests, as well as 99% of our reforestation sites, have been protected. We sadly lost parts of the 2025 Reforest Fest planting site and a significant volume of wood chip mulch…This is a fixable situation, and we are committed to replanting every lost tree and securing these fragile forest edges.”
The organisation has laboured tirelessly to protect over 20 of their restoration sites in the Uilenkraal Valley that boost forest ecosystem function and biodiversity.
It’s the kind of work that takes decades to achieve.
“What we’ve experienced here has been mostly good in the sense that for 20 years we’ve been preparing for this fire. Since we came here, we’ve been aware that fire presented the biggest existential risk and we’ve been creating fire breaks and clearing alien invasives. I can say that every alien that we cleared contributed positively to the outcome of this incident. The losses of biodiversity and losses to property would have been so much worse had there not been a long, long history of alien clearing in this valley. And one of the greatest contributors to the funding of alien clearing is the Greenpop reforestation project which essentially converts alien woodchip into indigenous trees,” says Greenpop arborist and conservationist Francois Krige.
Greenpop’s efforts in the area is part of its long-term partnership with the Platbos Forest Reserve, where more than 160,000 trees have been planted since 2011 to restore one of South Africa’s most threatened forest ecosystems.
While firefighters are still on the ground, another kind of support has been pouring in. Within 24 hours, Greenpop’s emergency appeal raised over R123,000 to fund equipment and repairs.
“I’d like to express gratitude to the Greenpop community for the incredibly timely arrival of a firefighting unit just as one of us seized up. They’d been breaking down pretty much continuously over five days, niggles here, niggles there, but Misha arrived here at the very hour that one seized…That was incredible in terms of a morale booster, in terms of despondency being replaced with hope and gratitude,” says Francois.
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The fire remains active, and conditions can change quickly. Greenpop’s GivenGain campaign will stay open to support recovery and reforestation once it’s safe to resume.
It’s been a really tough week in the Overstrand, but good has come out of it. Support continues to pour in, and Greenpop’s efforts have proved that fire preparation is essential.
There’s also a bit of a silver lining. The devastation the fire has wrought is an opportunity to advance the defence strategy, Greenpop says.
The burnt landscape means they have “new opportunities to create better and wider firebreaks at a fraction of the cost because the whole landscape is a firebreak at the moment.”
This will require long-term funding for the continuous labour needed to maintain these new, wider firebreaks and continue the essential alien clearing work, but these forests are worth protecting.
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