The hillside behind Tai Peng ("Mt Panorama") has been devastated by fire. A large section of the hillside went up in flames at the weekend, destroying virtually all vegetation in its path. The many diverse shrubs and herbs that had regenerated over the past few years will not now make way to gradual tree cover - we are back to square 1 in the continual game of pyromaniac snakes and ladders.

<img src="http://www.compunicate.com/Lamma/30/Fire1-bb.jpg" border=1>
<img src="http://www.compunicate.com/Lamma/30/Fire2-bb.jpg" border=1>

Tracing the course of the fire down the hill it appears to have started in the vicinity of this grave site

<img src="http://www.compunicate.com/Lamma/30/Grave1-bb.jpg" border=1>
<img src="http://www.compunicate.com/Lamma/30/Grave2-bb.jpg" border=1>

Is this just a coincidence? If not, how can we educate people to be more careful in their ritual pursuits at grave sites? If it is a coincidence, how else might the fire have started?

I saw the fire and went out later to see the scars.

Of course it's not a coincidence. Every grave-visiting festival sees these fires unless it's pouring rain. It's a crime, certainly to leave a fire unattended, but the police never enforce these laws. Fining a few firebugs a few thousand dollars is the only way things might change. It's terribly ironic that the whole rationale for these hillside graves is harmony with nature, but the construction of them leaves waste and ugliness and the careless visitors leave the surrounds a blackened waste.

Meanwhile, the District Council wants to spend tens of millions on widening roads in the name of fire safety.

Surely if someone sets fire to the hillside and leave it unattended they are nothing more that arsonists. Stupid rituals like this should be seen for what they are nonsensical and feudal.

It's not just waste and ugliness, but the possibility of any sort of tree cover on Lamma's hills seems to recede into the distant future like a mirage. Any covering of trees requires first grassland, then shrub cover etc, in several succession stages over a number of years. The hillside had progressed quite a way before this fire. This summer the rains will wash away more soil leaving more barren rocks. Very sad.

Yes, by "waste" I was referring to "becoming a wasteland".

I've noticed a few places where new gravesites seem to be encroaching on new territory. Such as on the hillside between the reclamation and the power station, which is a pretty dense growth, at least now until they set fire to it. Last year I think a new path and clearing was hacked into the vegetation between the beach and the main police post. There is apparently no oversight or inspection of what happens when permission is given for a new site, and I wouldn't be surprised if many were done with no formal permission. You'd expect the way land use is regulated that every site would have a little plaque with a number, but there's no way to tell if a site is legal.

Wasteland, a good movie.

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The troubled seed.

<img src="http://www.compunicate.com/Lamma/30/Recovering-2.jpg" border=1 hspace=10>

<img src="http://www.compunicate.com/Lamma/30/Recovering-1.jpg" border=1 align=left hspace=10>Visiting the same location a few weeks later, nature is slowly recovering and the charred hillside is now covered with green shoots and new growth.

But it'll take years to reach the same state as before the fire. Also, a lot of the top soil on Mt Panorama has been washed downhill by the recent thunderstorms and the foothpaths to the summits have turned into washed out, "hollow" river beds...

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This seems to be coming back nicely. Until it gets back its full plant cover, it will be at risk for soil erosion, especially if heavy people keep walking on it . Lost soil takes about 50 years to regenerate, I believe.

Congratulations, Foxy!

Your message was #10,000 on Lamma.com.hk!

10,000 messages in less than two years, since this website was founded in July 2002. I hope it won't take another two years for the next 10,000 messages!

Should we reminisce and celebrate?

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Great! What's the prize, then?

Foxy,
What would you like as a prize?

How about a fine bottle of wine or a free lunch or dinner, my usual prize for the best submissions to the Lamma-zine?

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Oh bugger! I've been scheming and plotting for days, hoping to catch the honour... one busy morning at work and it's all gone...

The Phoenix rises from the ashes! Phoenix hanceana to be specific, the spiny date palm found on many Hong Kong hillsides. This one appears to have survived the Mount Panorama hill fire and is producing flowers.

<img src="http://www.compunicate.com/Lamma/31/Phoenix-palm-bb.jpg" border=1>

One or two other species seem to have survived the flames too. At the rate evolution works, it seems that pyromaniacs have been around for a long, long time. Here are a couple of Chinese Hackberry trees at the same location that at first seemed to have been killed, but have started to sprout again.

<img src="http://www.compunicate.com/Lamma/31/Hackberry-rises-1-bb.jpg" border=1>
<img src="http://www.compunicate.com/Lamma/31/Hackberry-rises-2-bb.jpg" border=1>

The area just above the graves seems to have fared a lot worse, and nearly everything seems to have been zapped by the heat.
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So Zep, do you think the upland flora has evolved to survive regular fires? That would explain the lack of natural forest on the hills. Don't forget that natural fires from lighting strikes could extend the time-frame for the evolutionary aspect. And the typhoons of course. Ecologists call this a disaster or disclimatic (quarternary) succesion, I believe.

The flora hasn't evolved; just been selected. Idiots have been setting fires here for maybe a century or two, not long enough for evolution to get far. Plants evolve to accommodate fire in hot dry climates, like parts of Australia where some plants can't germinate until their seeds have been heated to over boiling point. I very much doubt that there were natural forest fires here more than once a century or even millennium before people lived here.

There are patches of natural forest around, such as near the power station, basically places where there are no graves for one reason or another, and/or too far from villages to suffer being harvested for firewood.

In 1841 when the British claimed HK it was described as a "barren rock" because of the lack of vegetation from locals cutting it for firewood. Don't hear much about Lamma of that period, but it was probably similar. The government protected the hills in HK to improve the watersheds. It was well forested after a few decades, but was stripped bare again during WWII and had to start again. If it wasn't for the criminally careless firebugs who set fires every holiday we'd be well on the way to having forest everywhere here.

Foxy wrote:


Er, yes, I was implying that, but it seems that I am wrong here, and that human burning activity is far too recent to have had any evolutionary impact. I checked with Dr Richard Corlett of the HKU Dept of Ecology and Biodiversity who is well up on these matters, but I see Alan has already put me right.

Here is what Richard Corlett writes:

"Fire is too recent a phenomenon in South China to have resulted in the evolution of fire-tolerant species. Stuff burns here only because people set fire to grass-dominated vegetation which in turn is a result of clearance of the original fire-excluding rainforest by people. The grass has to be there first since it is so difficult to set fire to closed woody vegetation in HK's climate. Fire frequencies probably reached a maximum in the 20th century after the decline in the use of hillside biomass for fuel and before the decline in rural population. Fires have favoured a sub-set of species from the regional flora which are able to either regrow from the base or spread rapidly from seeds. Both plant and animal diversity increase with time after the last fire, at least for the first 30-40 years that we can study.

"So fires are 'selecting' pre-existing fire-tolerant species from the regional species pool, not - or at least not yet to any significant extent - leading to genetic change in species that were not fire tolerant before. We are talking probably a thousand or so years of fire here, vs. at least 10 million years in Oz."

.

Thanks Zep, that's very interesting.

Dep't of Ecology and Biodiversity...nice one...

Alan wrote: "I very much doubt that there were natural forest fires here more than once a century or even millennium before people lived here."

But wait, doesn't Lamma have the oldest human settlement in Southern China? There is an archeological site dug in the 70s by a British archeologist who found tools and pots that were over 6000 years old right beside the top of Turtle Beach. But when you think about it it does make sense: sea turtles have been going to the same beach for thousands of years. Humans lived close by to steal the eggs - pure protein. I'm sure they burned fires to eat the eggs and would likely have let a fire or two get out of hand...

When I was first told that HK Islands mountains were bald I didn't believe it - until I saw photos. Incredible! But if one has hiked here on Lamma off the main trails you know how rocky it is and how the vegetation can become semi arid in the summer under a layer of rustic green...

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Geisteswissenschaffen

I recall some digs of buildings 3000 years old near PSB. But a few thousand years isn't long enough to evolve fire-resistant vegetation.

However, it's cutting trees down for firewood that is the main culprit, it has to be exceptionally dry for a mature forest to catch fire even if a campfire gets loose. Once reduced to scrub and grasses these dry out quickly and are very flammable, as we see every holiday it doesn't rain.