Albany Working for Water has made great strides in recent months, cutting invasive alien weeds in the most important catchments for Grahamstown’s water supply.
Albany Working for Water has made great strides in recent months, cutting invasive alien weeds in the most important catchments for Grahamstown’s water supply.
They have been doing initial clearing as well as follow-up work in the catchments for Howieson’s Poort and Settlers’ dams.
Photographs taken back in 2000 show how the top of the Poort was then choked with long-leaved wattles.
This area is now free of aliens and the indigenous grasses on the north-facing slopes, as well as the fynbos on the southern slopes, have totally re-colonised the landscape at Waainek, just below the water purification plant.
Even in the dry season, Grey Dam now remains full.
This is testimony to how successful the clearing can be. Further down the Poort, initial clearing is being carried out behind the Stone Crescent Hotel, and on upper slopes on private farmland adjacent to the southern commonage in Featherstone Kloof.
Here, wall-to-wall Hakea was threatening to become a massive problem, choking out the indigenous fynbos.
If a fire had ravaged this area, literally billions of seeds would have been broadcast over a wide area, compounding the problem for years to come, as many of the plants were mature, with seeds set.
Hakea have hard seed-pods which ‘explode’ in the heat of a fire, broadcasting and distributing the tiny, winged-seeds in the rising columns of smoke over many kilometres downwind of the fire.
Town under attack Whilst such strenuous efforts are being made to restore and rejuvenate our native landscape in rural areas, it is heart-wrenching to see how many townsfolk are blissfully unaware of – or simply don’t care about – the spread of these same alien plants in town.
Some nurseries still appear to sell some noxious plants such as Lantana, and a recent visit to lower Sunnyside shows that numerous house-owners have Lantana either growing in their gardens or in their roadside hedges, as in Thackeray Street (see photo).
Home owners need to be aware that these plants are declared noxious weeds and having them on your property renders you liable for a fine – at best.
Please do your bit by removing them, or simply spraying them with a weed-killer like Round-Up, to kill the plant together with its roots.
Fire season is here
As autumn closes in and the winter cold dries out the vegetation, it’s fire season again. All too often during the warmer sunny autumn days, we see columns of smoke rising skywards… the result of either careless folk with cigarettes or uncontrolled braais or – at worst – those who think that starting fires is an amusing pastime.
Last year Grahamstown suffered severely with fires damaging numerous properties.
This year, after the abundant rains in spring, the veld is carrying a heavier-than-normal load of combustible material, and the resultant fires will be hot and damaging.
All the more dangerous if the veldt is thick with invasive plants like gums, wattles and hakeas.
If caught early, most fires can be controlled by back-burning and beating, but wild, wind-driven fire-storms threaten lives and livelihoods – not to mention the thousands of creatures that perish in the flames.
If you see a fire starting, please report it immediately to the fire station (046 622 4444) or to the municipal Director of Parks Kevin Bates (046 603 6072), or if in the rural area, to a local landowner.
Contacts for Makana Enviro-News: Nikki Köhly: n.kohly@ru.ac.za, 046 603 7205 / Jenny Gon: j-gon@intekom.co.za, 046 622 5822 / Nick Hamer: n.hamer@ru.ac.za, 084 722 3458 / Nick James: nickjames@intekom.co.za, 082 575 9781 / Philip Machanick: p.machanick@ru.ac.za, 046 603 8635 / Strato Copteros: strato@iafrica.com, 082 785 6403.
