/ 18 October 2002

Feathers fly over blue swallows

Environmentalists are scrambling to ensure that a land claim settlement in Mpumalanga does not mean the kiss of death for South Africa’s most endangered bird, the blue swallow.

The misty grasslands of Kaapschehoop, a tiny village in the mountains above Nelspruit, are home to 10 of the estimated 60 to 80 breeding pairs of blue swallows left in Southern Africa. Scientists describe them as the birds most likely to become extinct next.

The birds travel from Uganda to a handful of sites in Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Swaziland in summer to breed. They build their nests on the ground, so they are easily disturbed and the parents then abandon their young.

Environmentalists are worried that it will be the end of the Kaapschehoop swallow if the land claimants are allowed to move into the area in a disorganised fashion and their cattle start grazing in the grasslands. The birds have been obliterated in most of the rest of the country because of commercial forestry and agriculture.

”The settlement has to be kept under control and the people must be informed about what’s going on with the birds,” says Edward Themba, a resident bird guide who takes up to 60 overseas tourists a week to see the swallows.

He says visitors come to see other ”special birds” in the area, including black bushcaps and striped flufftails. They also come for the oribis, a grassland buck that is listed as a threatened species, and the herds of wild horses that were left to roam free after mines closed down.

The Mpumalanga land claims commission has stirred fears about haphazard settlement by announcing that it wants the Kaapschehoop case completed by the end of February. Critics say there is no proper management plan in place, no environmental impact assessment and no clarity about the process being implemented by the commission.

The village, an eclectic collection of houses erected by artists and ecotourism operators, has grown around Stonehenge-like rock outcrops. There has been no town planning as it grew from 20 to about 120 residents since the early 1980s. The biggest limit to expansion has been a scarcity of water, which is drawn from boreholes at the top of the mountains.

”We need to determine how many people can feasibly live there and how they can do so in an environmentally friendly way,” says Steven Evans, manager of the Blue Swallow Working Group.

No one denies the validity of the restitution claim — which involves about 500 new households. The communities launching the claim were removed in terms of apartheid laws as gold mines closed and commercial state forests were planted.

The provincial Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Environment is trying to get 24 000ha of Kaapschehoop’s grasslands declared a ”protected nature and environment area”, with the swallows’ nesting grounds at the core.

Xolani Luthuli, communications officer for the land claims commission, told the Mail & Guardian this week that the communities understand the need for a protected area.

”We want to send out a clear message that the swallows won’t be affected by the land claim,” he says.

But Chris Williams, director of The Rural Action Committee (Trac) in Mpumalanga, says there is too much uncertainty about the claim and the process being followed.

”Trac has already witnessed far too much poor planning in the rest of Mpumalanga,” he says. ”Our concern is that the claimants are being placed in a vulnerable position. It’s just fancy footwork to say the claim will be settled by March.”