Cape Town - SANParks’ Draft Tokai Cecilia Management Plan (TCMP), which was released last week, has caused an uproar with some stakeholders worried about the continued intention to phase out the remaining plantations in Tokai Forest and Cecilia by 2024.
“In terms of the original national government decision and the subsequent Tokai-Cecilia 20-year ‘exit’ lease, the remaining plantations are being phased out by 2024.
“In response to this scenario, a wide range of proposals have been made to provide for continued trees/planted landscapes such as replanting, inter-planting of various species,” the draft stated.
Parkscape founder Nicky Schmidt said the indication that Tokai Forest and Cecilia Forest would be felled by 2024 made it clear that SANParks did not support safe treed landscapes in Lower Tokai or shade planting and treed spaces in Tokai and Cecilia.
“Despite encouraging us to put forward proposals for shaded landscapes, these have been rejected (by SANParks). Communities' calls for the retention of safe shade space in Lower Tokai remain ignored,” Schmidt said.
SANParks spokesperson Lauren Clayton said the phasing out of the Tokai and Cecilia plantations was a government decision taken in the early 2000s as part of a national forestry rationalisation process.
“The current 20-year ‘exit’ lease (2004 to 2024) between the then Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) and MTO Forestry was subsequently assigned to SANParks by the DWAF minister in 2005 for the plantation areas to become part of TMNP and the Cape Floral Region World Heritage Site, ” Clayton said.
Clayton said this was explained in the draft, and one of the milestones proposed was that SANParks would investigate options to extend the “exit” lease period so that current plantation shade areas could continue for a period.
Previous TMNP forum chairperson Stephen Floyd urged all involved in the plantations being phased out by 2024 to not be a slave to old agreements and rather do the best for the park and the people of Cape Town.
“Upper Tokai is a mess with more than a million alien plants. In all respects, it will require more than an alien volunteer army to fix this. Please can SANParks fix the upper zones before they cut down any more plantation.
“The last of the plantation will one day need to go. Let us be prepared with alternate shade trees and alien containment resources before we create another disaster zone,” Floyd said.