The Cape Peninsula National Park (CPNP) is the site of an award-winning public-private partnership that stands out for its sustainability, community and biodiversity benefits.
The partnership is responsible for a project that collects and propagates seeds of the CPNP’s indigenous forests, at the same time generating employment and long-term business opportunities for residents of Imizamo Yethu, a low-income settlement on the outskirts of the national park.
The forests are called Afromontane (or African moist mountain forests) and collectively they account for between 500ha and 800ha of the 22 000ha CPNP, which stretches from Table Mountain to Cape Point. Significant patches of the forests are found in Newlands, Kirstenbosch, OrangeKloof and Noordhoek. They are under constant pressure from urban development, commercial plantations, soil compaction and illegal harvesting for medicinal purposes.
CPNP’s project manager of forest ecology, Carina Pot-
gieter, says there is simply not enough genetic material within the indigenous forests to secure their sustainability in the future. ‘It is absolutely essential to conserve their genetics. If we do it right, we can increase the size of the existing forests, ensuring their long-term survival,” she says.
Under Potgieter’s direction, three collectors from Imizamo Yethu have been trained in permaculture, seed collection and appropriate propagation techniques. They are employed on a full-time basis to gather seeds from the forests, to propagate them at a nursery in Newlands forest and then to plant the new material back into the CPNP.
The nursery currently houses 6 000 saplings, 3 000 of which will be planted over the next year. The CPNP is also exploring opportunities for the collectors to sell the material not used in replanting.
It is an ambitious project as the reforestation of just one hectare of indigenous forest requires approximately 1 000 trees to be planted. ‘That’s a lot of trees,” says the park’s north area manager, Paddy Gordon. He points out there are potentially 145ha of forest area to be rehabilitated in the Newlands part of the CPNP alone.
One of the key needs is to rehabilitate land that has been cleared of alien vegetation, a focal area of CPNP activity. As a result the project – called the Afromontane Seed Collection Project – is supported by the Santam/Cape Argus Ukuvuka Fire Stop Campaign, a public-private partnership initiative aimed at reducing the risk of fire in the greater Cape Peninsula area.
The partnership has pledged about R180 000 a year to the project over two-and-a-half years. At The Green Trust Awards in June 2003, the partnership won the Natural Resources Conservation Award, sponsored by Lafarge South Africa.
While the project fits into Ukuvuka’s social upliftment programme, it also serves a practical purpose. The indigenous forests, with their ancient black stinkwoods, ironwoods and common yellowwood trees, act as natural firebreaks – unlike the alien commercial plantations found inside and alongside the CPNP.
Potgieter explains that the genetic material of the Cape Peninsula Afromontane forests is often slightly different from that of similar forests found in other parts of the country – notably KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. The black stinkwoods found in the CPNP, for example, are from a different genetic strain to those found in the Eastern Cape.
‘That alone is reason to conserve the material found here,” says Potgieter. She believes that within five years the project will be self-sustaining, with a number of collectors properly trained to collect, propagate, replant and sell their nursery products.