Bark stripping awareness signage has been installed at five different locations in Newlands Forest to fight bark stripping activities in Table Mountain National Park (TMNP).
South African National Parks (SANParks) in partnership with the Newlands Conservation Group unveiled the bark stripping awareness signage at Newlands Forest in TMNP on Tuesday 30 August.
The signage – located at the Littlewort trail entrance, Stone bridge, the Round-table picnic site on the contour path, the Middelpad gravel road, and the Maretha Park Bench area – aims to “educate and make the public aware of the bark stripping issues occurring in the Newlands Forest, and where they can report the incidents”.
According to SANParks, this comes after numerous bark stripping activities were reported in the forest leaving indigenous trees such as Assegai stripped of their bark. As a result, these compromised trees die a slow death due to the nutritional transport system being interrupted.
People’s Post first reported on the issue about two years ago (“Stripping local forests”, 1 December 2020).
At the time Francois Krige, owner of The Tree Liberation Front – a reforestation and ecological rehabilitation business focused on the area in and around Platbos forest – explained the people doing such damage to the trees were not traditional healers but independent harvesters who sell to traditional healers.
He said the pressure on the resource was simply too much and even if it were to stop immediately, it would take the forest 500 years to fully recover.
Focused on preserving Newlands Forest and the indigenous forest on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain, the Newlands Forest Conservation Group was founded by Willem Boshoff and Neil Williamson about three years ago. The community-based group aims to create awareness and encourage community involvement.
In a previous interview, Boshoff shared that the group saw bark stripping in Newlands Forest on an industrial scale during the hard lockdown.
He said by winter last year, the indigenous forest had been at risk of being stripped to collapse.
SANParks rangers apply a paste to stripped trees to try and help them heal, but the survival rate is low and most bark-stripped trees rot and die.
Frans van Rooyen, TMNP Park Manager, describes the impact of bark stripping as devastating. “It is our mandate to conserve Newlands Forest for the benefit of all and future generations.”
But it is not just trees growing in TMNP that are being targeted.
After several bark-stripping incidents in and around Durbanville in February, the City of Cape Town’s Recreation and Parks Department embarked on a project to paint the trunks of trees at risk of being bark-stripped in Durbanville CBD. The PVA paint mixture renders the bark unattractive for harvesting.
A post on TreeKeepers’ website in July this year said that the City were recommending that all trunks of trees being targeted for bark stripping should be painted with watered-down PVA paint.
TreeKeepers is a citizens’ organisation that works to conserve trees in the urban forest.
According to the post, the top five trees mostly affected were fever trees (Vachellia xanthophloea), camphor trees (Cinnamomum camphora), Cape Holly (Ilex mitis), Assegaai trees (Curisia dentata) and Cape Beech trees (Rapanea melanophloeos).
“We hope this preventative measure works, but we also need to increase visible policing in our street and natural forest areas and set an example by prosecuting the perpetrators who kill the trees by their unscrupulous actions,” the post read.
SANParks appeals to the public to report bark stripping activities to the emergency number 086 110 6417 when seeing bark stripping in progress or send an email to Newlands.Fieldrangers@sanparks.org with the GPS location or description of where bark stripping was located.
People who notice any illegal bark harvesting, or who want to report sightings of bark stripped trees or bark stripping in process, can submit pictures and provide any logistical information to the City’s law enforcement department by calling 107 from a landline or 021 480 7700 from a cellphone, or send an email to RP.Enquiries@capetown.gov.za
