Cape Town - The Newlands Forest Conservation Group has started a petition calling on SANParks to create a dedicated “Strategic Biodiversity Unit” for Table Mountain National Park (TMNP) to specifically tackle poaching and bark stripping. This comes as Newlands Forest is being bark-stripped at an alarming rate.
The petition has already gained 8 000 signatures with support from a stakeholder groups of TMNP, including the Friends of Table Mountain (FOTM) and Parkscape, which both said the rate of poaching and bark stripping in TMNP had become increasingly severe over the years with no sustainable solution from SANParks yet.
Supporters said despite repeated appeals, SANParks was failing to take sufficient action to deal with what was purported to be organised criminal activity.
The Newlands Forest Conservation Group co-founders Willem Boshoff and Neil Williamson said: “Since 2019 there has been an exponential increase in bark-stripping and other illegal harvesting of plants, with entire sections of Afromontane forest entering a state of collapse. Despite the occasional arrest, bark-stripping and plant poaching continue unabated due to a lack of resources dedicated to the problem.”
Boshoff said they were losing up to a dozen mature trees in a single night and this had a tremendous impact on the forest.
The group applauded the work done by SANParks’ existing Sea, Air and Mountain team, but said they were under-resourced for the many issues plaguing TMNP such as muggings, bark-stripping, illegal camping and fires, marine poaching and more.
Thus, they called on SANParks to make the necessary resources available and establish a dedicated “Strategic Biodiversity Unit” to deal with the specific and complex problem of poaching of natural resources from TMNP.
Boshoff said: “The war on plant poaching, especially bark-stripping, is being lost at an alarming rate. We view this as an organisational failure. This manifests as a lack of strategy, pro-activity and continuity. Almost all action is taken after the damage was done.”
FOTM chairperson Andy Davies added: “SANParks have admitted that TMNP is a difficult park to manage and we have repeatedly called on their executive management and even Minister Barbara Creecy to provide more budget and resources for management of TMNP.
“We are disappointed in the lack of commitment in increasing the TMNP budget, particularly when we know that SANParks are making a handsome profit out of this troubled park.”
Parkscape founder Nicky Schmidt added: “Bark-stripping not only destroys the forest, its rich biodiversity and recreational pleasures, it also dramatically increases the fire risk as the trees die off and increase fuel load. A fire in Newlands Forest will have devastating consequences not only for the forest, but all surrounding properties – more so given fire’s ability to spot up to 5km in strong wind conditions.”
