By Wallace Mawire
Communities in Zimbabwe have been urged to adopt a multi-sectoral approach in a bid to combat wildfires as the 2026 fire season begins.
In an address at a Veldfire Management media briefing in Harare yesterday, Amkela Sidange, Environmental Management Agency (EMA) Environmental Education and Publicity Manager said they have a mandate to ensure that they prevent the degradation, the pollution, and everything that has to do about the sustainability of the natural resources in the country.
“That is where our concern is coming from, especially when it comes to the bonfires.Our concern really comes from protecting the ecosystem goods and services, because there are services and goods that we get in our ecosystems, so we are so much keen to look at how best they can be protected,” Sidange said.
She raised concern over destruction by wildfires. Sindange said during the past two to three years, a lot of property has been lost in the country. According to Sidange some of the property includes lodges, including forestry and farming equipment.
” It’s coming from the energy sector; we lost a lot of energy infrastructure. So these are just some of the things that we consider, not excluding the human livelihoods as it were. It’s also our major concern,” she said. In a bid to address challenges of wildfires prevalence in communities, according to Sidange, EMA is prioritising issues of fire monitoring and reporting which the agency said they remain key.
Sidange said the agency is focusing on the need to take the people to understand where we are and where we are going, where we are coming from.
The agency also identifies provinces that are leading in veldfires riskiness.
She said the information collected is used in preparing for the next season to assess when communities are most vulnerable to wildfires.
Sidange said communities are more exposed to wildfires when the dry season approaches. The agency also also highlighted that it applies law enforcement mechanisms combat occurrences of human-induced wildfires.
Sidange said if the country wants to fail in preventing wildfires or in fighting them , the duty of discouraging such incidences should not be relegated one sector. EMA said the laws in the country give them room to have a multi-sectoral approach in the prevention of wildfires in the dry season.
“When we go into Statutory lnstrument (SI) 7 of 2007, it also spells out that we have got a statutory period, a wildfire period which is usually 31 July to 31 October. And there are reasons why the nation thought of that period,” Sidange said.
She said when the country gets to 31 July, it will be dry, windy and getting hot, conditions which exacerbate the spread of the wildfires. Sidange also said this will be a period from October 31 when the country usually expects the first effective rains.
She said the agency has realized that due to climate change, the statutory period has also shifted. Sidange said that the agency has noted that the country is beginning to register more wildfires before the start of the prescribed statutory period and more fires after the statutory period has ended.
According to Sidange, as of 31 July, 2026 to date at least 748 wildfire incidences have been recorded. She said wildfire incidences were recorded by the agency through remote sensing and some of the fires were reported to by members of the communities. EMA said in the same period, at least 276,828 hectares have been lost countrywide so far.
She added that before the onset of the season the country had already lost some few hectares. ” I think we need also to understand that during the pre-season, where we are coming from we had already lost about 186,979 hectares of land before the onset of the fire season, and we had recorded 627 fire incidences,” Sidange said.
She added that before the country went into the fire season one life had been already lost due to wildfires. EMA said one person died in Masvingo due to wildfires before the fire season. Sidange said because of climate change issues and seasonal shifts, the country begins to lose land before it is even in the fire season.
She said fires are being recorded before the prescribed fire season. Sidange said last year during the fire season the country recorded 794 fire incidences 240,796.6 hectares were lost. She said comparing the 2025 fire season and the 2026 fire season within the corresponding period from 31 August, 31 July to 31 August 13% in the fire incidences has been noted.
She added that the incidences this year are on the lower side, adding that last year in the same period, the country was already at 794, but this year 748 incidences have been so far recorded. This has been recorded by EMA as a minus 5.79% difference.