CAPE TOWN: The Newlands Forest Conservation group is offering up R5 000 for the arrest or information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of any individual caught illegally bark stripping in Table Mountain National Park.
“It's not our desire to see people go to jail, but urgent intervention is required; our hope is to see arrests and plea bargains being instituted to allow culprits to help fix the damage they're doing,” said Willem Boshoff, a member of the group.
Recently they found that at least 10 more trees had been stripped in the Newlands Forest in the last few days.
Two more mature trees were found bark-stripped on Monday near the Newlands ravine picnic site - one a Cape Beech, the other an Assegai. The Cape Beech was fully girdled for about 2m; the Assegai was about 85% girdled and is not likely to make it.
“The culprit even left his lunch/dinner’s rubbish right there - the content suggesting it was a single person; probably stripping on Sunday night or Monday during the day (people have been seen stripping at 11am before). It is basically a free lunch for bark strippers in the Newlands ravine area, with easy access and zero enforcement; there are very few mature Cape Beeches and Assegais left,” said Boshoff.
He added that the group has called on SANParks to set up a task team urgently with the sole goal of stopping this.
“We are literally seeing the forest being destroyed in front of our eyes. We appreciate the work the rangers are doing; but the forest is too big and accessible for them to put a stop to this as part of their day-to-day work,” said Boshoff.
He said they will be engaging with the relevant parties to try to get a plan in place.
Friends of Table Mountain chairperson Andy Davies said that they had noted with deep concern the extent of bark stripping in Newlands Forest, which has been going on unabated for the past five years.
“Long-term damage is being done to the forest due to mature indigenous trees being targeted for illegal harvesting of bark, which is done in an unsustainable fashion and which kills most of the trees. Newlands Forest, along with the other forested areas on the eastern and southern slopes of Table Mountain, are rare pockets of afro-montane forest around Cape Town and must be protected. We call on SANParks to urgently intervene in this matter, and appoint a task team to stop the damage that's being done,” said Davies.
SANParks said they were aware that there had been a number of bark-stripping activities at the Newlands Forest section of Table Mountain National Park.
“Our rangers have been conducting daily patrols in and around the forest, and early this year they arrested three suspects who were in possession of 59kg of bark. We have conducted several awareness campaigns to the park visitors at Newlands Forest, communities adjacent to the park, and to our social media platforms highlighting the devastating effects of bark stripping. All damaged trees are sealed when rangers do their enforcement and monitoring in the area. There have been camera traps set up to gather intel in the prevention of this environmental crime,” said SANParks spokesperson Babalwa Dlangamandla.
SANParks urge visitors to report bark stripping activities to the emergency number 086 110 6417 when seeing bark-stripping in progress, or to send an email to [email protected] with the GPS location or description of where the bark-stripping activities were located.
Weekend Argus