Lowveld Focus! Lowveld Focus! Lowveld Focus
Dear friends,
This month we have decided to do something a little different and concentrate on one of the Regions in this wonderful country. The Mapumalanga / Limpopo Lowveld is, after the Southern Cape, the most visited tourist attraction in South Africa. The main focus of this activity is the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere Region encompassing the Kruger National Park, Hoedspruit and the Blyde Canyon, the Panarama route and Hazyview. This includes one of the greatest National Parks and the third biggest Canyon in the world, and most of South Africa’s top private Game Reserves and Lodges.
Apart from tourism there is a wealth of agriculture in this area, with the climate allowing for year-round crops. The backbone of the agricultural industry is fruit production with the area producing the majority of our country’s citrus, mangoes, avocados and bananas. Forestry, sugar, table vegetables and a decreasing beef industry complete the farming picture. In the Limpopo Lowveld mining is a major industry with the world’s largest copper mine, and a top-quality emerald mine being the ‘flag ships’, and phosphates, mica, zirconium, and a number of other minerals also being mined.
The first articles is general in nature but relates to a very environmentally significant new National Park. The next three articles are issues about which Christians should be aware and responding to. The remainder of the articles reflect on a smattering of the environmental work that Christians are doing in the area. This newsletter has been compiled and edited by Pierre Naudé and credit is given to the Kruger Park Times Newspaper, published bi-monthly from Hoedspruit, for material used (with permission!) - reporter Melissa Wrey for the first three articles and Jaco Badenhorst of the KNP (writing in his personal capacity) for the fourth. (For reasons of space these articles have been edited. Any omission is the fault of the Editor!)
The Blyde Canyon will officially be declared a National Park on Heritage Day, September 24, this year. This was announced by Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk on June 8 during a budget speech made to the National Council of Provinces.
The official name of the new National Park has yet to be decided but according to Chris Clarke, who has been coordinating the initiative for the Department of Environmental Affairs and the World Conservation Union, the preferred name of the new park is Mapulaneng National Park. (This roughly translates to “place of fortune”: ma - mother, pula – fortune, neng – place of.)
The new national park will be a place of many firsts, and is already being heralded internationally as a new era in national park creation. One of the firsts is that it will bring one of the richest collections of plant and animal species on earth under formal protection, linking up a mosaic of different landscapes such as mountain grasslands, mist-belt forests, woodlands and savannah bushveld. This will incorporate some of South Africa’s rarest species, many of which are threatened with extinction. It will also be the first national park to be looked after by a provincial authority. In terms of new environmental laws the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Board (MTPA) will manage the park instead of Sanparks. In keeping with new visions for bringing conservation and people together the MTPA will be looking after the park for successful land claimants. The descendants of people evicted from the land many years ago will become partners with the state, allowing the state to become custodians of the land while the communities benefit from the area’s tourism potential which van Schalkwyk said “is expected to inject R500 million into the local economy over the next ten years.”
Over the next three years, Environmental Affairs has budgeted R18 million for the development of the park. The first R10 million of this will be spent on the creation of a public-private partnership luxury hiking trail, which is expected to cost guests in the region of R800-R1,200 for a night’s accommodation.
Also on the cards are 500 beds, restaurants, adventure activities like river kayaking, abseiling and forest canopy trails, and a cableway. The park will initially cover an area of 44,000 ha, but in excess of 10,000 ha will be added once commercial plantations in the area are rehabilitated and returned to a more natural state over the course of several years. Minister van Schalkwyk was positive about the creation of the new park, saying, “Blyde has the potential to become one of the fastest growing malaria-free tourism destinations in Africa.”
Did You Know?
WILL KRUGER LOSE ITS LAST RIVER GORGE?
With the already apparently inevitable loss of the Olifants River gorge to the raising of the Massingir Dam wall in Mozambique, the Kruger National Park (KNP) has one last remaining unspoilt gorge left on a perennial river. The Sabie River gorge in the southern section of the Lebombo Mountains is unique in both the Kruger Park and the entire Sabie River system.
For many years a sword of doom has been hovering over the valley and its unique combination of biodiversity in the form of the Corumana Dam, located in the Moamba district of the Maputo Province of Mozambique. When construction on the Corumana Dam stopped in 1989, the dam wall had not been raised to its intended full supply level and the waters did not reach back into Kruger, sparing the Sabie Valley. However, with the help of a World Bank loan of US$ 14.6 million to fund water resources management in Mozambique the rehabilitation of the Corumana dam has begun and a feasibility study on raising the dam wall has been completed.
About two kilometres of the Sabie River will be flooded in the KNP if the dam wall is raised, drowning a unique water berry forest and a number of plant species that only occur in that section of the Park. The river will also lose its pool-rapid system, a type of river flow where bodies of clear, calm water end with the water spilling over rocks. These sections of the river are of major importance for fish and crocodile life and the loss of these, coupled with the loss of the pool-rapid system in the Olifants Gorge, will have unhappy consequences for South Africa’s aquatic biodiversity. Raising the dam will also increase the amount of siltation in the Sabie River.
The Wits University Centre for the Water and the Environment has been running a series of research projects on the Sabie River since the 2000 floods. Head of the centre, Prof Kevin Rogers, says that if the Corumana Dam wall is raised, “an entirely unique” and “irreplaceable” ecosystem will be lost, and Sanparks will not be fulfilling its mandate to preserve biodiversity.
Juxtaposed with the environmental impact on KNP there are reports in other media that the committee for facilitation of agriculture between Mozambique and South Africa has plans (reportedly valued at R3.7 billion) to use water from the Corumana dam to irrigate 29,000 ha of land to grow sugar cane for ethanol production. By increasing the height of the Corumana Dam wall, this will further facilitate this agricultural development and provide jobs in Mozambique.
Imagine driving your vehicle with a clear conscience, knowing that the fuel powering the car comes from a renewable source, produces fewer greenhouse gases to contribute to global warming, and has created thousands of sustainable jobs in areas of South Africa where there is little economic potential.
Now imagine thousands of hectares of land covered in a plant that sucks up far more of the country’s precious water than indigenous vegetation, a plant that no animal can or will eat and four seeds of which can kill a child, a plant that requires millions of Rand to remove or prevent its spread to new areas, coupled with impoverished rural communities who no longer have any land left to graze their cattle or goats and who are disillusioned by broken promises of work for all.
These are two sides of a coin about to be tossed. The currency at hand is biodiesel, the coin bears the legend Jatropha curcas. Plans have been afoot in South Africa for several years to plant Jatropha curcas, also known as the Barbados nut or the physic nut, in order to extract oil from its seeds to use as biodiesel. With the rising price of crude oil and the increased emphasis on mitigating global warming, the plant has never looked more attractive to investors.
In 2004, a company approached the department of water affairs about planting 15,000 ha of Jatropha curcas in the Olifants River catchment in Limpopo Province (the major water source for the Central KNP and central Mozambique) allegedly with the blessing of the Department of Trade and Industry and funded through an arms deal offset. This March the North West provincial government gave R10 million to a bio-diesel pilot project that plans to eventually plant 60,000 ha of the trees on communal lands.
The idea of planting Jatropha as a biodiesel crop seems firmly entrenched in the minds of economists, but others have serious concerns. Many of these concerns come from research or work in countries which have had previous experience with Jatropha curcas. The plant is now declared a noxious weed in parts of Australia, is classified as a weed in at least eight other countries, and many South African botanists have concerns that it will become invasive in South Africa in much the same way as the black wattle, Port Jackson and the pine tree have.
Aside from these concerns questions have also been raised as to its oil-producing abilities! A fuel-from-Jatropha project in Nicaragua was stopped after it was proved to be uneconomic for smallholders. A Malawian USAID-sponsored study rejected Jatropha as a potential oil-producing plant for improving smallholder livelihoods for various reasons, including the fact that “the strength of the market for Jatropha products” was “unfounded”. While some biofuels, like Soya oil, can be placed without modification into diesel engines, a Zimbabwean Jatropha project concluded that Jatropha oil was a flawed diesel substitute. It is also been found not to be suitable as a paraffin substitute for cooking or household use. At present South Africa only plans to blend ordinary diesel with biodiesel, for which Jatropha oil would be suitable.
In countries where Jatropha has been grown, the oils have been used more for soap production than for use as a biofuel. However, Jatropha is poisonous, with the seeds containing both cyanide and a toxin called curcin and research has found a compound in the oil that acts as a cancer promoter. Usually, when oils are extracted from seeds to make biofuels they leave behind a high-protein residue in the form of a seed cake. The sale of these residues as a protein source for animals goes a long way towards lowering the price per litre of a biofuel. However, with Jatropha, the seed cake could not be used for animal consumption without being treated for the toxic chemicals the plant contains, and so could only be sold as a fertiliser, which may also pollute.
At present, the Jatropha coin is still in the air. The Water Research Commission is investigating how much water the plant needs in order to see if it has to be classified as a crop that would need a licence to grow because of the amount of water it uses. Bua News reports that Mafikeng Bio-diesel Pty Ltd is using funding from the North West provincial government to create a nursery that will produce four million Jatropha seedlings each year.
While the Jatropha curcas coin is spinning, will the face it finally shows be influenced by funding allegedly from an arms deal offset or by the weight of research?
DON’T BLAME THE ELEPHANTS
We recently came across unmistakable evidence of elephant damage while on a wilderness trail in the south of the Kruger National Park. Twenty six large trees with heights of five metres plus had been pushed over by elephant within a distance of 500 metres and within 50 metres of the dirt road, either side, that we were travelling. At first we thought that it was due to a storm but the tell-tale sign of bull elephant tracks at the base of each tree, soon confirmed the cause. The trees were all either marula, knob thorn or red bush willow and the evidence indicated that all 26 trees had been pushed over roughly half a day before we had arrived.
I explained to my guests that this is typical elephant behaviour when more than one bull walks together. I told them that it is said that “one bull will do less damage in a one-hectare area in 10 days than 10 bulls would do in the same size area in one day”. Here is the proof. Pushing trees over is a show of strength to elephant bulls. “If you can do it, so can I!” This is a natural way of displaying dominant behaviour and proclaiming status. The problem is that it spurs them on and the overall damage to the vegetation increases as the elephant population grows ever larger.
I humbly believe I have the right to voice my opinion. I am a qualified conservationist with a passion for wilderness. I am a tree hugger and an animal lover but at the same time I am a realist. I have done well over 600 three-day wilderness trails in KNP since 1993 up until the present time. I had and still have the freedom and privilege to traverse all seven wilderness areas in the KNP on foot. This amounts to over 300,000 hectares of wilderness, where no people except officials and trail guests are allowed to go.
Over the last 12 years I have seen the increasing damage caused by elephants, whose numbers have slowly increased over the years. This is all from first hand observation. I have not been influenced by wildlife documentaries, the media, hunting organisations, animal rights movements or any other second hand information - not even from scientific reports on the topic. I am not questioning the work that scientists do but I believe the reality is not easily found behind a computer screen. The reality is what happens at ground level. Some scientists and their reports have to be questioned as it is often animal rights organisations that sponsor them.
Slowly but surely the elephant in KNP are changing the existing woodland into shrub land. One has to be blind not to be able to see the increase in damage and disappearance of large trees. The question is: “Should we blame the elephants for that?” They have been genetically programmed to do what they do and they have been doing so for thousands of years. We cannot change their behaviour. We can blame their lack of freedom. Blame the fences that contain them. Blame the increase of human settlements and the decrease of wilderness areas. Blame good wildlife protection and successful anti poaching operations. Blame dedicated officials who have established and maintain a national park with an excellent reputation in conservation management. But do not blame the elephants!
KNP is, at the end of the day, very similar to a domestic stock farm. Any successful stock farm has to sell or slaughter its stock to keep the balance and prevent the over-utilisation of the land. It has a maximum carrying capacity and the farmer must get rid of the surplus. There is obviously a big difference between the animals on a stock farm and the animals in a National Park but the principle of maintaining balance is the same. Every year thousands of antelope get culled (hunted) on over-stocked game farms and nature reserves all over the country to prevent the land becoming over utilised. How different are elephant? Are they simply a more emotive subject than antelope?
It will not be too far into the future that the increase of the white rhino population in the KNP will also become a problem. White rhino numbers have dramatically increased in the last 10 years and will continue to do so. The buffalo population has also increased and is currently at the maximum carrying capacity – so the scientists say. What are we going to do with them if and when they become too many? It is no longer endangered species that we have to worry about but endangered spaces.
The most important aspects of modern conservation are soil preservation and environmental education. Without soil there can be no plants, without plants there can be no animals. That is the order. We cannot reverse that order. Tourism cannot be more important than elephants or soil. People must be educated to see the bigger picture and think realistically and not emotionally. My children will not see a wild marula or baobab if we manage the KNP on emotions. The environment needs our realistic support.
Sell, slaughter, contraception. sterilisation. These seem like the only solutions to stop the elephant population from increasing and destroying our heritage and diversity. A laissez faire approach will kill diversity. Selling or translocation may be the best option but is a short term one only and also extremely stressful (don’t forget that) and we seem to be running out of places to move elephants. Contraception, sterilisation and culling are all drastic solutions. Sterilisation and contraception are against any animal’s instinctive, ingrained reproductive behaviour and, apart from being hugely costly, is virtually impossible in a Park as large as Kruger. Producing offspring is an important part of animal behaviour and sterilisation and contraception is simply the culling of future generations. Culling is, in my opinion, the most sensible and practical solution.
Unfortunately difficult and emotive decisions are going to have to be made … and are going to need to be made sooner rather that later.
WATER FOR LIFE
On a mission to bring clean drinking water to the rural poor, two enthusiastic Americans recently demonstrated the effectiveness of an award-winning water purification product at an algae-infested animal drinking hole near Hoedspruit. Ron Rhodes and Ron Hicks, both highly successful businessmen in America, and united by their strong Christian faith, are hoping to use Hoedspruit as a base to create a distribution programme for the PūR water purification product, using a network of missionaries in Southern Africa.
They plan on bringing wealthy US businessmen to Rhodes’ house on Moditlo and from there to show them some of the problems faced by the rural poor, in the hopes that they will help fund the project. The two Rons, together with Hoedspruit-based Andre Pelser, will then arrange for the water purifier to be distributed to missionaries working in rural areas. Hicks says the plan is to create a network that can take PūR out to areas where normal distribution networks don’t reach, and create a sustainable local infrastructure that can ensure clean water for people.
At the waterhole a bucketful of water was scooped up - full of mud and algae and tiny bugs. Hicks added the contents of a sachet of PūR – four grams can purify 10 litres of water – and then followed the simple procedure to make clean drinking water. After the PūR is added, the water was stirred for five minutes. Just before the five minutes was up the water got noticeably darker and as the stirring stopped all the suspended matter fell to the bottom of the container – in this case a stringy clump of all the silt and algae.
The PūR contains two main ingredients – iron sulphate and calcium hypochlorite. The iron compound is a flocculent, which is a chemical that “causes all the floaty bits in the water to clump together”. The other compound releases chlorine, which kills harmful organisms. The process is essentially the same as a town’s water purification system on a micro scale.
The filtered water can immediately be drunk although a waiting period of 20 minutes ensures that all the germs are dead. Rhodes said that, once purified, water can be stored for up to a week. He added that the only time it is not safe to drink is if it turns yellow after the five minutes of stirring – this usually indicates chemical pollution in the water, such as from mines or industrial processes. Rhodes says, “For US$ 1.50, a family of five can be kept in clean drinking water for a year.” He feels that with so much attention focussed on Aids in Africa, not enough attention is given to the fact that over two million children die each year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by drinking unsafe water.
BASIC FOOD SECURITY
Researchers for the University of the Witwatersrand Rural Facility (WRF) in the Hoedspruit area recently established that basic food security for many households has been threatened due to the death of breadwinners from HIV-Aids related diseases. This means that there is increasing dependence on harvesting food from already overused natural resources and the wellbeing of many families is seriously affected.
FeatherLeaf Environmental Ministry, based on the Lowveld, has approached a number of international aid agencies to seek assistance for programmes working towards food and water security for affected families. The response, generally, has been “South Africa is a prosperous country with a growing economy. It does not qualify for assistance.” Unfortunately for the 15% of the South African population who live well below the United Nations extreme poverty indicator of US$ 1.00 per day they feel neither prosperous nor that they are benefiting from a growing economy.
FeatherLeaf has approached Pastor August Basson, who offers training in Biblical Agriculture, to lead some courses in this region. Basson has established projects in Lesotho and East Africa where he has significantly reduced the input costs and dramatically increased the yield while requiring less work, improving the condition of the soil and reducing water consumption! Working in backyard vegetable patches and small fields with struggling families who were unable to provide adequately for their needs Basson has seen families progress to producing enough food for their needs, then enough to assist neighbours and finally enough to even take crops to sell at the market.
A number of Christian farmers in the Hoedspruit area have agreed to allow their workers to attend a two day workshop with Basson and to allow two test plots to be developed on their farms – one to be farmed by traditional methods, the other according to Biblical Agriculture methods. The proof will be there for all to see! Workers who have been convinced by the evidence will then be able to apply these methods in their villages. Subject to FeatherLeaf raising the necessary finds to transport in people from surrounding villages, Basson will also conduct a workshop in the Acornhoek area (the focus area of the WRF research) to equip families affected by HIV-Aids to become food secure.
CREATION MINISTRY
Increasing numbers of Christian groups are making the pilgrimage from the city to the Lowveld to attend courses run by FeatherLeaf Environmental Ministry. Church family groups, youth groups, orphanages, HIV-Aids workers, Business Management teams, Christian Single’s Groups, Home and Cell groups from as far as Cape Town, Durban and Gauteng have participated in programmes that introduce people to the wonder of God’s creation while being ministered to in various ways.
Using the environment as the medium for training, exploration and experience, FeatherLeaf encourages people to encounter the Creator and His creation and reflect on their relationship with both. Recent activities have included:
o Guided retreats in colonial-style Safari Camps in big-5 reserves. These are life changing experiences for small groups. (And the occasional elephant charge provides the adrenaline!);
o ‘Survival’ style leadership training courses for youth groups that teach life and leadership skills, team building and group skills while giving the participants an amazing exposure to God’s creation.
o The Mountain and Canyon Adventure with visits to the Blyde Canyon, an animal rehabilitation project, a rain forest, the top of Mariepskop and other places of amazing beauty and interest (often not accessible to tourists) along with boat rides, walks and game drives makes for a Church ‘Family Camp’ with a real difference. And sitting around a camp fire in the evening taking about the things of God while listening to the roar of a lion somehow seems to be so much more effective than doing the same thing while listening to the roar of traffic!
Pierre Naudé, an ordained minister, seconded to work in the environment, heads the FeatherLeaf ministry. He has 20 years of training experience in the Air Force, Methodist Church and Scripture Union. A variety of other Christian leaders from the area work with him making an exciting team consisting of trainers, field guides, ecologists, ex Park Wardens and the like. They bring with them vast experience in the environment, camping, outdoor ministry, people development skills and, of course, all have a deep love for God and His creation.
Notes:
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