Win-win solution to aliens
NOW here’s a good story to tell. This week, the Water and Environmental Affairs Department delivered 200 desks made of alien invasive timber to Kalana Primary School in Peddie.
As department spokesman Zolile Nqayi explained to me on Tuesday on the eve of the handover by Deputy Minister Rejoice Mabudafhasi, the desks were made from alien gums in a Working for Water (WfW) eco furniture factor y.
Falling under the Water and Environmental Affairs Department, WfW was launched in 1995 right here at Driftsands in Port Elizabeth by then minister Kader Asmal and it remains one of the government’s most innovative programmes in my view.
Water-sapping alien invasive vegetation is eradicated, freeing up river flow and protecting indigenous biodiversity. This protection saves money because biodiversity delivers free ecosystem services (like the provision and purification of fresh water, provision of food and building material, control of climate and disease, and crop pollination) for which we would otherwise have to pay.
Alien invasive trees suck up much more of our precious water than indigenous species, and they burn easily and very hot, exacerbating the problem of runaway veld fires and accompanying destruction.
The Kalana handover is part of a much bigger project which has been quietly rolling forward in partnership with the Department of Basic Education for the past two years, Nqayi says.
Some 10 000 desks have already been produced in eco furniture factories and delivered to schools countrywide. But the focus has been on the Eastern Cape and 188 schools in this province have already benefited in this regard.
Many more desk deliveries are in the pipeline for schools in Mthatha, Qumbu, Libode, Port St Johns and Lusikisiki.
The Kalana desks are made from the wood of the red river gum, a pest species indigenous to Australia, from trees felled in George and Gauteng. In these areas and more widely across the western and northern Cape and Free State, the red river gum competes with indigenous riverine trees. Extensive stands along watercourses cause a significant reduction in stream flow.
Red river gum is particularly good for this kind of furniture, Nqayi says. The desks are high quality, durable solid wood manufactured for less than half the cost of chipboard desks which last a fraction of the time of these eco-desks.
They were manufactured by a WfW eco furniture factory in Heidelberg in Gauteng. There are similar factories in the Garden Route National Park, in Mpumalanga and in Limpopo.
The department is establishing one in Garankuwa in Gauteng, and three more are planned for Grahamstown, Ngcobo and Cofimvaba here in the Eastern Cape. The existing factories had first to prove themselves sustainable before more were rolled out. Work is picking up steadily so this can now happen.
The existing factories manufacture not only school desks but other products too from park benches to coffins. They are also investigating the use of alien invasive timber to generate energy when burnt in a furnace and to make ceilings. At present, these factories employ 457 people. The WfW-commissioned National Invasive Alien Plant Survey indicates that alien vegetation affects to varying degrees about 20 million ha of land in South Africa (which has a land surface total of 122 million ha). The worst affected province is the Eastern Cape with 460 000ha of our 16.9 million ha land surface affected to some degree by aliens.
The study shows there are 27 invasive species which are together causing most of the problems nationally. The worst culprit in the Eastern Cape is another Australian export, the black wattle.
I was part of a hike recently in the upper Zunga River valley, a key catchment for the Groendal Dam. It’s pristine wilderness in many ways but at some point a local farmer must have brought in a few wattles and now they infest this watercourse, their seeds distributed by animals and birds, and the river.
An estimated R6.5-billion is lost each year to invading plants, but this would have been an estimated additional R41.7-billion had no control been carried out, the study notes. “This indicates a saving of R35.2-billion every year (approximately 4.8% of South Africa’s annual GDP).”
The hope is that they get more eco factories up and running as soon as possible to avoid having to truck stock across the country, generating financial and fuel emission costs. Local factories supplying local schools is surely the best model.
Are we winning the war against alien invasive species? We would have been far worse off if we had not engaged in battle, says Philip Ivey, national coordinator of WfW’s early detection and rapid response programme.
A new national strategy aimed at a more strategic use of WfW resources and focusing on key areas where the fight can and must be won is right now under review. If approved it should give new impetus to WfW’s fantastic work.
Let’s hope they start their new phase with the Zunga.