Volunteer Day
Calling on volunteers to come help a climbing team on the upper uMngeni River in the Dargle area.
Across the pond in the UK, volunteer days in villages seem to catch the imagination of the citizenry. Put up a poster in the local, and the next Saturday they seem to have people flocking to help tidy up the town or the stream, or the park. Our colleagues at Adopt-A-River have a monthly beach clean-up right here in KZN, and that seems to go well. It does perhaps help that the location is in a big city, from which it must be a bit easier to get a group of volunteers. In the highlands, the sites needing help are out in the countryside, and a volunteer has to travel there….in so doing, displaying a new level of commitment.
Nothwithstanding these fears, we have organised a volunteer day on the uMngeni River on Saturday 12th June 2021. The task at hand is to clear small sapling growth (wattles) off a very steep slope, on Brigadoon Farm on the uMngeni. This small cliff (about 15 metres high and around 200 metres long) was cleared of big trees in 2018. That task was completed by a specialist tree feller, with guys roping in with chainsaws. Of course the big trees are gone now, so it doesn’t make sense to pay a tree feller (upwards of R12,000 per day!) to cut small saplings.
In the last 2 years, follow up teams have cut saplings away either side of this cliff, but for safety reasons have avoided the slope itself.
Enter the Pine Busters!
Pine Busters are a fantastic group of volunteers who remove pines from hard-to-reach places in the Drakensberg. The thing they have in common is a love for mountain climbing, and they put these skills to work removing trees while hanging on ropes. While our site in the Dargle is tame compared to the cliffs they encounter in the berg, their skills are exactly what we need to get the job done.
They have offered to help us, and we are in return collecting a donation to help them out.
Volunteers to drag away the cut saplings, help fetch and carry gear, and maybe just get them a hot cup of coffee, are invited to join us for the day, or part thereof. We don’t mind if people come along to educate their kids, and all they do is re-fuel a chainsaw or go fetch a rope from the bakkie, we just need some hands on deck to make things go more smoothly.
So here is the invitation to you:
We meet at Taste Buds Farmstall at 8:30 am. Get there a few minutes and Sue or Nicky at Taste Buds will sell you a hot coffee and something delicious to eat. Then we leave any extra/unneeded cars behind and drive up to the farm (16kms) . Once there, we can leave low clearance cars near the dairy, and pile on any bakkies in the mix, and drive through the farm (2kms) to the site, which is right next to the farm road.
Anyone wanting to join for just a few hours, or anything up to the whole day, is most welcome to come along. The site is not dangerous, so we encourage you to bring your family and kids along. When you are there you can see what work has already been done on the river, and enjoy the spectacular views.
If you have any questions, please call or whatsapp Andrew on 082 57 44 262.
REPORT BACK:
Our small band of committed volunteers got a great job done. Most of the slope was cleared. A special thank-you to the members of “Pine Busters” who made it happen.
And as seen 5 months later in November 2021
What are the problems caused by wattle
Wattle trees are more problematic than you think. They don’t only sap valuable water….
The common and simple message about wattle, is that it sucks more water out of the catchment than indigenous vegetation. If that were the only problem with wattle, we would march out there and poison the lot and walk away. Until now several agencies have done just that. Doing that is a problem! It is an issue because in doing only that, one has not solved the problem at all. The need to understand the difficulties about wattle is therefore important when planning the removal of a wattle grove, including the timeline, resources and budget you may need.
Wattle does indeed sap a lot of water. I have heard figures of 1300 to 1600mm per annum. Rainfall in the area where we work is between 800 and 1200mm per annum.
Other important effects of wattle relate to the allelopathic effect, in which the plant prevents other species from growing in its leaf zone. I explore that on a real site outdoors in this video here:
Apart from how much water they draw, consider these aspects: Andrew takes us through a grove of wattle trees and shows real examples of the harm that they can do.
Another aspect to consider, is that wattle seed remains viable (i.e. they can germinate) for a whopping 60 years after they land on the ground! Wattle seeds are also triggered to germinate by fire.
As a legume, wattle puts some nitrogen into the soil. In addition, it causes the wash away of topsoil. Take a look at this explanatory video: wattle problems explained It also acidifies the soil. If you add all these factors together, it means that a patch of felled wattle will only be suitable habitat to a particular suite of species. Those species are pioneer species, and most are alien and themselves invasive. This is very evident in the field. One cannot wish grassland back! It is really hard work, and no one has nailed the formula of what to do, when the patch becomes a jungle of blackjack, wattle saplings, khaki bos, and bug weed. It is certainly easier if you patch is on flat land, accessible by tractor, and if the area has been de-stumped. I say this because continual mowing works really well in getting grasses back in there. But in the steep and sometimes remote valleys, this is not possible.
This business of wattle removal is therefore maturing into a more holistic field of “grassland re-establishment”, of which the initial felling, and even the first year or two of follow up, are very clearly just the beginning.
From a paper by Yapi, O’Farrell, Dziba and Esler, we learn:
“ active restoration is required to enhance ecosystem recovery (Beater et al. 2008; Gaertner et al. 2011; Le Maitre et al. 2011). In some cases, elevated levels of soil nutrients (Yelenik et al. 2007; Gaertner et al. 2011; Witkowski 2012) derived from nutrient rich litter, and N fixation in the case of legumes, can lead to the undesirable situation of reinvasion by the same and or other species after clearing”
So in summary, wattle causes erosion and sucks water, and its other, and equally significant problems manifest when you cut it down.
Further reading:
Re establishing grassland
What to do after the wattle is gone…
Re establishing grassland
Its not easy!
Re-establishing grassland is not easy! After removal of wattle, one inevitably ends up with bare earth, somewhat rich in nitrogen from the legume effect of wattle, arguably still affected by Wattle’s allelopathic effect, and littered with woody debris. Going from this to dense grassland does not happen easily. In fact, it could be argued that this step is more difficult than the task of removing the trees themselves.
For one thing a fire may have gone through the landscape. This could be a natural occurrence, or a move by the landowner to “tidy up”. Burning is also not necessarily wrong. In fact one school of thought is to burn regularly, so as to trigger germination of the huge bank of wattle seed, as a means of ‘flushing it out’. There is real merit in this. But if the trash has been piled high, the fire will have been damagingly hot, and the earth will be baked and laid bare. The pulverised, baked earth is often best described as orange talcum powder. It has no structure, is hydrophobic, and nothing will grow in it. It represents a real erosion hazard!
Quite aside from burn areas, the ground is receptive to pioneer species, most of which are alien. Blackjacks (bidens pilosa), Khakhi bos, and other tall species grow. They have a poor basal cover, but are better than bare earth. The challenge is to get desirable species in before those weeds can predominate and shade out the species we would like to see. By all accounts, seeding a mix representative of highland sourveld is something that has never succeeded. Locally, a “summer veld mix” can be bought, and although it is not fully representative of the highland species mix, it comes as close as one can get. Initially we preferred a mix of Lovegrass and Teff (Eragrostis curvula and Eragrostis teff). Teff is indigenous to Ethiopia, but it is an annual and does not re-seed. Its advantage is that it germinates quickly to hold the soil, and will attract cattle, bearing other species in their dung. The curvula takes longer to germinate but does come away well in the end. The problem is that the teff does not germinate if merely scattered on the site: it must be raked in. It also will not germinate if there is a dry hot spell of weather. Also, the curvula tends to dominate and not allow the natural ingress of a diversity of species. So we use the “summer Veld Mix”, and we seem to be having success.
This quote from Grassland habitat restoration by Smith, Diaz and Winder , sums it up well:
“We conclude that there is no “quick fix” for the establishment of a grassland community; long-term monitoring provides useful information on the trajectory of community development; sowing gets you something ,but it may not be the target vegetation you want that is difficult to establish and regenerate; it is important to sow a diverse mix as subsequent recruitment opportunities are probably limited; post-establishment management should be explored further and carefully considered as part of a restoration project.”
and from Farmers Weekly:
“Effective restoration of encroached areas is not a short-term project, but a long-term commitment. “Chopping down a few trees and using a bit of poison here and there won’t solve the problem. There’s no quick-fix – you need a management plan as well as a budget if you want to succeed,” says Arnaud. “But,” he adds, “the rewards pay off as the land becomes more productive and animals can flourish.”
Our best summary of the way to do it, will follow in further posts…….