Going where others don’t
Between October 2021 and December 2022, Upland River Conservation undertook a project along the upper uMngeni and its tributaries to clear inaccessible areas. The areas in question were variously steep, or remote, or in some way difficult to reach. Since projects are difficult to supervise and manage in these spots, they are apt to get bypassed by other agencies.
This was all the more evident, since NRM (“Working for water”) and other teams worked through the catchment in 2021 and 2022, and the areas which they skipped (often with good reason), were the ones we targeted.
One site (tackled in Oct/Nov/Dec 2021) was on the Furth Stream (an uMngeni tributary). Here we cleared wattle, treated stumps with herbicide, and planted grass, on what were largely north and east facing slopes. The planting of grass was a significant aspect of this project. The idea is to at least partially out-compete wattle re-growth. More importantly, we want to attract the farmer’s beef cattle into the areas. Cattle, with their big un-selective mouths, will do our follow-up work for us by ingesting tiny wattle saplings, but they will only do this if there is dense, nutritious grass to be had. So our aim was to rid the valley of wattle (at least in the riparian zone to start with), and get good grass growing. The area was seeded with a summer veld mix in the spring.
Work in progress on the Furth Stream
Timing is everything with this work. Grass is best established if sown in the spring (before Christmas). So we only got as far as completing this site in 2021, and then we had to wait until spring 2022 to start on the next sites. But before we leave the Furth site, take a look at the “after” picture taken 12 months later:
Only grassland and indigenous bush left
Fast forward to late July of 2022, when we were able to get going again, with the impending spring in mind. Our second site was in the deep gorge of the Poort valley. This site really is remote and difficult to reach, and clearing it of wattle was an enormous task. Our team did well, and as spring approached the broad swathe of cleared alien trees started to stand out.
The Poort gorge
Once we were done at the gorge, we commenced in October 2022 with a high altitude team. In this part of the project we tackled some 26 small cliffs along the river, where other agencies had not been able to clear due to the skills and equipment required to do this work. Mindful of the fact that a high altitude team doesn’t come cheap, and that cows can’t graze these areas, great care was taken to remove every last sapling of wattle, no matter how small, and to plant replacement vegetation. Given that grass seed couldn’t always be sprinkled, we used “plant pucks” (or “biscuits” as they came to be known by our climbers). These are small coffee-puck sized disks of compressed coco husk, into which we inserted grass seed. The biscuits were wedged into crevices or buried in small gaps along the cliffs, where they would await the first spring rains. Once wet, the biscuits swell, and retain moistuire, providing the seeds with a perfect germination place. On these sites, we also planted indigenous forest pioneer trees and shrubs on the south facing slopes.
By close of the project in December of 2022, we were well pleased with the result. Thanks to the work of various agencies clearing wattle in the last two years, topped off by this project in hard-to-reach places, this valley is now a sweep of grassland as it should be.
Thanks for this work must go to WWF South Africa, and the funder, PepsiCo. Without their co-ordinating and funding roles respectively, this work would not have been possible. Thank you to the teams of Joe Gwamanda, Jabulani Mthalani, Alfred Zuma, Wellington Mabaso, Henry Nene , and Nirvana Ramsaram. Thank you also for the input of Ivanhoe Farm in drone spraying wattle saplings we could not reach in the Poort gorge. Also to the Dargle Conservancy and Amanzi Ethu Nobuntu for allowing us to hire their sponsored team when our budget was running lean.
This truly was a team effort.