Please Help Us To Safe Our Forests
Environmental Issues of Cape Town
Tree, Forest and Fynbos Myths
Copyright
Urban Forest Protection Group
Newlands Forest
2006
Upper Tokai Forest 2006 clear-felled in 2000
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
Henry David Thoreau
In Principle this site is about a new kind of FANATICISM ...not just against our foreign species forests, but it seems against all alien/ foreign species... .
The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) had decided to eradicate all "alien" trees !
All alien trees! Please try to imagine what the Peninsula will look like !
The trees of Tokai and Cecilia forests will NOT be replanted. The Blue gums along Swaanswyk Rd. will be cut. In about 10 years there will be no trees anymore.
Instead, if we are going to believe the academic ideologues of Table Mountain National Park (henceforth referred to as TMNP), fynbos shall grow there ! ( one rare kind, so they hope, in particular, of which 99.999 % of the citizens have never heard of)
That is at least what they tell us. However, most likely this fynbos will not grow again, because the seeds are about 100 years dormant in the soil. After that experiment has failed we must expect townhouses to "grow" there instead. The Park is allowed to sell its assets !
In matters of water guzzling, "invasive" pine trees, "fire adapted" fynbos and varies other details of the forests and the environment we believe TMNP has in the past and still is persistently misinforming the public ! We are not against clear felling because it looks ugly, like some try to rumour, we are against clear felling because it makes no sense, neither economically nor environmentally.
These two forests, Tokai and Cecilia, occupy a mere 2% (previously 1000ha) against approximately 98% Fynbos (43,000ha) .... but provide strong recreational value to the people of Cape Town.
The fynbos ideologues like to call the Tokai and Cecilia forests plantations since this term suggests they were planted to be cut anyway. As a matter of fact most of these trees are 40 years old and according to contemporary scientific definition resemble forests. Even the SA Government in its own documents is calling them forests.
If the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry´s (DWAF) "Exit Strategy" is executed as outlined there will be no forests in the Western Cape anymore. The famous Afro-montane trees, to which TMNP and SANPark like to refer to, will grow only in certain ravines and kloofs and can not replace them. The economic consequences for the province are described here.
Please Help Us To Safe Our Forests
