OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday
SOUTH Africa faces a massive battle to exterminate exotic plants which are robbing the country of precious water resources and threatening its biological diversity, in spite of hacking out close to a quarter of a million hectares of invasive alien vegetation last year.
According to the Working for Water Programme (WWP) annual report, invading alien plants are spreading at a rate of five percent a year in South Africa, and more than 10-million hectares of invaded land – an area greater than the size of KwaZulu-Natal – still have to be cleared.
Releasing the report at Parliament, Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Ronnie Kasrils said the arithmetic was “very frightening. We really have basically sounded the alarm bells.”
The rate of clearing required to halt the spread of aliens is in the region of 500 000 hectares a year – more than four times last year’s first-time clearing efforts.
However, WWP programme leader Dr Guy Preston said he was confident the 20-year programme his organisation had in place would bring the situation under control.
Key to this would be new regulations compelling land owners to clear their land of invasive vegetation before they would be allowed to transfer, re-zone or subdivide it which come into effect next month.
Preston said the WWP’s budget for the current financial year – R375m – would also make a big difference.
“The clearing figures do not take into account the efforts of the forestry industry and private land owners to rid their land of alien vegetation,” he said.
Invasive alien plants in South Africa pose massive economic and social threats in terms of the country’s water security, land usage, veld fires, floods and ecological integrity.
The WWP is recognised as the world’s leading initiative to combat invading alien plants.