Military approach to fire prevention at Montigny

How the Montigny team keep unwanted fire out of their Eswatini plantations …

A return to sound forestry practices of the past coupled with the introduction of a military-style approach to fire management at Montigny Investments forests in Eswatini has had a big impact in reducing the number and severity of wildfires experienced in the company’s plantations. Key factors in the turnaround include improved community relations, a zero tolerance approach to arson and crime, well trained and drilled ground-based fire teams and astute use of tried and tested ‘old fashioned’ fire prevention methods coupled with modern technology.

Commercial tree plantations in Eswatini – particularly the Usutu plantation - have a history of fire, due to a combination of rugged, mountainous terrain, extreme weather events and a proliferation of arson fires.

Massive fires in 2007/8 destroyed large swaths of the Usutu pine plantation (then owned by Sappi) resulting in the eventual closure of the Usutu pulp mill and the loss of hundreds of jobs.

Montigny Investments, a Swazi owned and operated, integrated timber business, purchased the Usutu forests in 2014, bringing their total land holding to 80 000 ha of which 50 000 ha is planted. The Montigny team is renowned for its innovative and highly practical approach to business, and this approach was applied to the development of a fire prevention strategy that is designed to keep their plantations safe from massive fires such as the one that destroyed Usutu in 2007.

Aerial view of Montigny timber processing facility, Eswatini. Montigny processes more than one million tons of timber a year.

According to Montigny Forestry Manager Jurgens Kritzinger, they looked at the history of fires in the plantations that they operate, and discovered that in the old days there were fewer fires, less damage, better roads, good relationships with neighbouring communities and own operations. As time went by the ownership changes at Usutu led to outsourcing of operations, unhappy people and more arson fires.

The Montigny team turned the ship around by going back to some of the best practices that worked well in the past, re-introduced own ops using their own people and own equipment, put huge emphasis on building community relationships, invested in improved roads, planted dynamic wattle belts and employed a military expert to help them adopt a military-style approach to fire prevention.

Arno Pienaar was serving with a security company in Iraq when he was head hunted by Montigny to head up their fire and risk management function in 2015. Surprisingly, at the time of his appointment Arno had zero forestry experience and zero fire management experience. But the Montigny management were confident they had enough people with forestry and plantation fire experience already – what they needed was Arno’s military expertise.

Arno Pienaar … Montigny Group Risk Manager, presenting at the13th Fire Management Symposium at Nelson Mandela University’s George Campus, South Africa.

In 2015, the Montigny approach to fire management was introduced, with immediate results. That year the company suffered damage to just 18.4 hectares of plantation as a result of wildfire. Prior to that, average annual fire damage was 1 000 hectares. There was also a marked decline in the number of arson fires recorded.

This was not just a flash in the pan, a lucky break! The ever improving fire stats have been sustained to the present day, and speak for themselves:-

YEAR	HECTARES DAMAGED BY FIRE	ARSON FIRES
2014	606 ha	–
2015 (new system introduced)	18.4 ha	19
2016	74.8 ha	11
2017	0	6
2018	45 ha	5
2019	590 ha	6
2020	4.3 ha	1
2021	145 ha	8
2022	2.9 ha	5

Arno provided some insights into the Montigny approach to fire prevention at the 13th Fire Management Symposium held at Nelson Mandela University’s George campus in November 2022.

Fighting fires is a bit like fighting a battle, he said. Success depends upon clear objectives, good preparation and intelligence, the availability of well trained personnel on the ground, the right tools and plenty of ammunition.

All the elements of fire management were carefully analysed in the process of developing a comprehensive strategy that left no stone unturned: fuel load management and fire break preparation, fire detection, reaction, suppression, command and control at the fire front and in the control room, mop up and patrols.

Good intelligence is crucial, explained Arno. Know all the relevant facts.

Reducing the number of arson fires was a key priority. They analysed where arson fires were started, what time of the day (or night) they occur, the phase of the moon. People are predictable and criminal activities follow a pattern – understand the patterns and your counter measures will be more accurate, he said.

Manual harvesting and tractor-trailer short haul at Montigny South, Eswatini, maximises jobs from forestry operations. The Montigny Group employs 11 600 people making it one of the biggest employers in Eswatini.

Getting the community on side

Getting the community on their side was a key part of the strategy. Montigny is renowned for their community programmes. They have established an entire village at Bulembu that looks after over 350 orphaned and vulnerable kids, just one of a number of community projects which provide a good foundation upon which to build community relations.

A dedicated K9 team that breeds and trains bloodhounds to track and find anyone engaging in criminal activity on Montigny property has proved to be an extremely effective deterrent to crime and arson, but has also helped get the community on their side. Most of the K9 missions currently undertaken are in fact solving crimes against the communities living in and around Montigny plantations. Crime doesn’t only affect the forestry company – it also affects the communities deeply, and safety and security is high up on their priority of needs.

Now the criminals know that they are not going to get away with it, says Arno. Even if they don’t secure a conviction, the criminals are pointed out and the community knows who the trouble-makers are – they are the same people who start arson fires. Even the police frequently request assistance from the Montigny K9 team. Thus the community has become an ally and a valuable source of intelligence. So much so that the community stepped up and helped the Montigny team protect the plantation during the unrest that swept across Eswatini in 2021.

They also changed the rules around not allowing employees to give people lifts in company vehicles inside the plantations. A small thing, but the spinoff is significant.

“How can you drive past somebody in your company bakkie with Montigny signage on the side who has to walk 10 kilometres to the nearest bus stop, and expect them to support you?” asked Arno.

It’s this kind of thinking that changes mind-sets.

“The people on the ground realise that we are there to help them – not just to make money for ourselves,” said Arno.

Montigny forestry creates local jobs and utilises a network of subcontractors for timber transport and other operations.

Staff selection and training

Staff selection and training is another key part of the strategy. Dedicated fire teams have very specific tasks and are drilled military-style until they are extremely fit and are experts at their job.

The Montigny team has cancelled their expensive plantation fire camera detection system and have instead established a network of old fashioned fire watch towers with 24-hour surveillance over every inch of the plantation. The tower guards report any smoke detected instantly to the control room, setting in motion a chain of action from highly trained fire-fighting teams that are geared to get to the fire front within 8 minutes.

The fire watch towers also contribute to preventing crime as the guards report any irregular or unscheduled activity in the plantation, which will be followed up and investigated by one of the 300 Montigny field rangers patrolling the plantation.

“We put out any fire that we detect within three kilometres of our boundary,” said Arno. “This is our rule, and there should be no deviation from it.”

A hard lesson was learned in 2019 when a fire was detected outside the Montigny boundary, but within the three km zone. The fire-fighting teams had been busy fighting another fire and were exhausted. Arno was instructed to leave the new fire as it was not in the path of the prevailing wind and was considered low risk. He was told that he was pushing the fire-fighting teams too hard. So he reluctantly left that fire. But the weather turned, the wind picked up and it entered the Montigny plantation and caused extensive damage. Lesson learned!

“You cannot make emotional decisions,” states Arno. The rules are the rules. No deviation.

Fire boss training

Fire bosses were identified as a key link in the chain of command, and they receive dedicated, customised training. The Montigny team has developed a user-friendly software app that gives fire bosses instant access to critical info about fuel loads, terrain and weather at the fire site, as well as availability and location of fire-fighting teams and equipment, enabling them to make quick, informed decisions.

Arno says that in their experience aerial bombers have not been very effective, especially in the mountainous terrain as they have to drop their water from too high, so they rather rely on ground-based fire-fighting teams backed up with customised fire tenders and bakkie sakkies. Ground crews are needed to mop up after an aerial water drop in any event, so that is where they have invested their resources.

“In the military we know that the air force can give you the initiative, but it’s ground troops that will win you the war,” said Arno.

One of the biggest problems encountered by fire-fighters in rugged terrain is that they run out of water at some point, and the fire gets away while the troops are desperately trying to get more water to the fire line. Arno says this is unacceptable – you can’t afford to run out of ammunition in the middle of a battle. He saw a demonstration of a compressed air foam system and realised this could help extend the capacity of their fire-fighting units to extinguish fires. Now the Montigny fire tenders fitted with CAF systems use 10% water to 90% fire retardant foam to douse fires. This allows the water in the fire tender to last much longer, while also making the hoses lighter and easier to handle, allowing fire fighters to reach the fire front faster. He says his teams can deploy a 180 metre fire hose inside a compartment in 1.5 minutes. Speed is everything.

Using 90% fire retardant foam to 10% water turns a 7 000 litre fire tender into a 70 000 litre fire-fighting resource.

He likened the ‘chaos’ of a wildfire to the ‘chaos’ that troops experience during a gun battle.

“We broke down the 'chaos' element into small bits,” said Arno. Each element is analysed, prepared for and practiced over and over.

The Montigny team’s success in stopping wildfires quickly before they get out of control has significantly improved as a result of cool heads, good management and well trained fire-fighters.

However effective fire prevention starts long before the outbreak of an actual fire and involves every aspect of the forestry operation from budget allocation to fire break preparation, fuel load reduction and slash management, access road design and maintenance, personnel selection and training, community relations, equipment selection and availability, vigilance and readiness.

This takes a team effort and total alignment throughout the organisation with very clear objectives, concluded Arno.

Air drying timber at Montigny South, Eswatini. The Montigny team is able to extract maximum value from each and every tree that they harvest due to the diversity of markets that they supply.

Check out the related feature: Mega-fires, politics and the force of nature

Using science to verify the origin of wood products

The fight to stop illegal logging has received a major boost from an international organisation that uses scientific analysis to verify the source of timber products, thus ensuring that retailers and consumers cannot be duped into supporting the illegal destruction of the world’s forests.

On their journey from forest to market, timber products typically travel through complex supply chains. Much of this trade is not verified, while the methods that are often used to trace the origin of wood products are inefficient, paper-based and wide open to fraud. With so many points of potential failure it is nearly impossible to effectively police the system and prevent wood products from entering the supply chain that were sourced from land that should not have been deforested.

This science-based approach to traceability allows companies and enforcement agencies to shine a light on whole supply chains and provide irrefutable proof of species and origin. This is achieved by using scientific analyses to test a wood product’s origin based on its physical properties. The organisation is building an extensive global library of reference samples, from various forest regions around the world, for use in cross verification.

Woodbois Limited, an African focused forestry, timber trading, reforestation and voluntary carbon credit company, is the latest company to partner with World Forest ID to enhance the traceability and identification of timber originating from its forest concessions in Gabon.

Woodbois Ltd is supporting World Forest ID's mission by coordinating the collection of samples from within its concession areas.

“This partnership with World Forest ID represents a critical building block in the Woodbois suite of services for the sustainable management of Africa's forests,” commented Woodbois CEO, Paul Dolan.

Woodbois CEO Paul Dolan – cementing a partnership with World Forest ID.

Woodbois Ltd has three divisions focusing on the production and supply of sustainable African hardwood products, the trading of hardwood and hardwood products, and a reforestation and carbon credit division. The forestry division has production facilities in Gabon and Mozambique, managing a total of 470 000 hectares of natural forest concessions. The trading division sources and supplies sustainable timber to a global customer base while the carbon sequestration division aims to generate voluntary carbon credits for corporate partners through the delivery of large-scale reforestation projects.

World Forest ID was formed by an international group of organisations which bring expertise in forestry, traceability and biological sciences, to create a global standard in species and origin verification. To date it has collected 2 163 samples, from 290 species in 28 countries. Data from the library of references can be used by companies and prosecutors around the world to verify the origin of any wood product, thus ensuring that consumers are not being sold a lie.

All plants have chemical, genetic and anatomical signatures that are specific to their species and location of origin. By creating a detailed library of geo-referenced plant samples from around the world, the World Forest ID team can test products against this library to verify the authenticity of the claimed origin of the timber. With such accurate, indisputable data, it provides assurance for people to consume responsibly and for governments to prosecute criminal behaviour.

Samples are collected from forests and agricultural land around the world with sufficient density to create a global map of samples. Once collected, each sample is analysed to provide a unique chemical, genetic and anatomical signature that’s specific to its species and location. When complete, this information is added to the World Forest ID library.

Veneer manufactured by Woodbois, made from timber sourced from their forest concessions in Gabon.

By applying the same analysis to consumer products, matches can be found within the reference library to identify what the product is and where it originated.

The challenge is to build a library of reference samples from around the world in sufficient detail to enable any consumer product to be tested against this to determine its origin.

As well as being used to create paper, packaging and timber products such as furniture and flooring, a huge amount of deforestation is caused by land being cleared for agriculture. Often this is for products such as palm oil, soy and rubber, which are used in many everyday consumer products. Forests are also being cleared to grow the animal feeds used in meat and dairy production. The sheer volume and diversity of consumer products involved means that the likelihood of us using produce linked to deforested land is pretty high.

World Forest ID was established by a consortium of organisations including the US Forest Service International Programme, Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, World Resources Institute, Agroisolab, FSC and Assurance Services International.

For more info, visit:-
www.worldforestid.org
www.woodbois.com

Gabon pushing for certified timber

Marking timber harvested from the Ogooué concession in southern Gabon.

Gabon Advanced Wood Sarl (GAW) is a company in Gabon which holds a timber concession. It recently obtained a new Forest Stewardship Council™ forest management certificate for its Ogooué concession in the south of Gabon, located in the Haut Ogooué and Ogooué Lolo provinces.

The company’s operations are located in the town of Moanda and supply certified logs to processing industries established in the Nkok Special Economic Zone (SEZ), a 1126 ha multi-sectoral industrial park located 27 km from Libreville. It includes industrial, commercial and residential zones. In its entirety, it brings together 144 companies from 19 countries operating in 22 industrial sectors, including a cluster of 84 companies dedicated to wood processing. (https://www.gsez.com/).

The Ogooué concession covers 179 861 hectares of forests, including 25 996 hectares of strictly conservation area. The concession includes about 309 inventoried tree species and iconic and threatened mammalian species such as elephants, chimpanzees and gorillas.

The Ogooué concession in southern Gabon, which harvests tropical timber that is processed at a nearby special economic zone, has achieved FSC certification. The Ogooué concession covers 179 861 hectares of forests, and includes 25 996 hectares of strictly conservation area which is home to threatened species including forest elephants, chimpanzees and gorillas.

This is the first FSC forest management certificate in Gabon since 2014 and an important milestone for Gabon's ambition to have all their forest concessions certified by 2025. With this certificate, the total area of natural forest responsibly managed in Gabon under FSC certification reaches 2 241 051 hectares.
There are now more than 5.5 million hectares of FSC certified forest in three countries of the Congo Basin: Cameroon (341 708 ha), Gabon (2 241 051 ha) and the Republic of Congo (2 989 168 ha).

Covered 85% by forest, on 22 million hectares, Gabon has a stock of exploitable wood of 130 million m³ of Okoumé and 270 million m3 of other species. GSEZ has enabled the country to develop and modernise a wood sector that was previously not very promising by relying on specialisation, one-stop services and alignment with the national development strategy. With 3.4 million m3 produced each year, Gabon has become Africa’s leading producer and exporter of tropical plywood, and the world’s second largest exporter. The country intends to go further in adding value to its wood products by transforming GSEZ into a centre for the manufacture of "Made in Gabon" furniture by 2025.

Plywood plant at the Nkok Special Economic Zone in Gabon. The Gabon government has committed to getting all forest concessions in the central African country certified by 2025.

Faced with growing demand, GSEZ has made sustainability, traceability and certification of wood sourced in Gabon and processed at its facilities one of its priorities. All of Gabon’s forest concessions are operated according to the sustainable forest management practices prescribed by the Gabonese Forest Code. In terms of traceability, since October 2018, GSEZ has benefited from the services of the Tracer-Nkok agency, which filters the logs entering the zone in order to limit the risk of illegal timber as much as possible. By 2022, all the country’s forest concessions will be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and/or PEFC Gabon in order to improve the traceability of the wood and ensure respect for communities and workers.

Forest workers prepare for their shift, Gabon.

Integrating wildlife management and forestry in Zambia

Trees are carefully selected for sustainable harvesting from the Mbizi woodlands. Felled by chainsaw, the roundlogs are extracted with a tractor trailer combo that has minimal impact on the local environment.

Mbizi Farm in Eastern Zambia is one of those rare businesses that successfully integrates wildlife management with commercial forestry management objectives.

The 17 000ha estate, which employs nearly 50 people from surrounding communities, provides a personalised safari experience to visitors from around the world.

The mixed Mopani woodlands in which the farm is situated contains many tree species that are of significant importance to local communities for their fuel and other needs. Many of these tree species also have significant commercial value and about 2 400 m3 of Mopani, Kiaat, Pod Mahogany and Mukosa timber is harvested annually and processed at the Mbizi Sawmill for the production of export planks and other timber products.

The farm is FSC certified and as such provides assurance that it is managed in a responsible and sustainable manner.

This is a first for the Mopani ecoregion which covers extensive areas in Eastern Africa, and is home to an abundance of wildlife including elephant, buffalo, leopard, lion and many other species.

New machines and technologies have been introduced at Mbizi to ensure low impact selective harvesting of the trees is conducted in terms of forest management plans that allow for the sustainable use of the woodlands and forests. Mbizi is also serving as a model for other local operations to opt for sustainable forest certification through the Afzelia Group Scheme.

Mbizi Farm is traversed by the Luangwa river which is an important water resource for farms and villages across eastern Zambia. Responsible management of this farm ensures that it will continue to provide valuable ecosystem services to surrounding communities.

Mbizi Farm is managed and owned by two Swedes, Michael de Gre-Dejestam and Lennart Packendorff. It is one of the first FSC certificates in Africa, and probably the world, where the management of wildlife is fully integrated with commercial forest management objectives.