Cape Town - A number of irate residents arrived at Lower Tokai to find felling of the pine trees was under way. Included was a man, with his dog, who refused to leave the cordoned-off area even when the police were called.
Clive King, who went into the forest with his dog at about 7am on Tuesday, said chopping down the trees and turning the area into fynbos was a security risk.
"The fynbos bushes are seven feet high. People are going to be raped, murdered."
A number of people lashed out at SANParks for a lack of consultation.
Nicky Schmidt of Parkscape, which represents over 2 000 people, said the unseemly haste with which this felling exercise was being conducted, apparently planned in secret, with military precision, was arguably an act of bad faith.
She said they had attempted to engage with SANParks for over four months to reach a solution which met the needs of the community and biodiversity needs.
"SANParks have ignored emails and employed delaying tactics to avoid engagement," she said.
Thirty hectares of pine will be cleared over the next four to six weeks in several blocks including Tokai and Cecilia. MTO Forestry is using a harvester which can chop down around 2 000 trees a day.
Harvesting of the fire damaged compartments by MTO Forestry was accelerated in order to save the commercial value of the timber before it was lost to wood rot and windfall, Tarcia Hendricks, the spokeswoman for SANParks said.
Dog walkers and horse riders were among those upset about the loss of an area they had used for decades.
But ecologists can't wait to see what emerges from the fynbos seedbanks when the trees have gone.
Anthony Hitchcock, nursery manager at Kirstenbosch who is in charge of threatened species, said Cape Flats Sand Fynbos was the most threatened on the planet.
Fynbos ecologist Tony Rebelo said the seedbanks under the pines could be over 100-years old.
Once the trees had been removed, the area would need to burn to stimulate the seedbanks, he said.
Then, after rain, the seeds would germinate. He estimated that by May or June next year the fynbos would be visible, but it would take a few months to be able to identify the different species.
Gavin Bell, area manager for the southern and central section of the Table Mountain National Park, said the felling had been a long time coming.
Cape Argus