The Pine Tree Project

Thanks for posting Dave.

The ones in the Hlatikhulu/Sterkspruit are a pretty bad infestation, with some substantial, dense clusters. As VE we only did a little bit of work on those, in a small area which we called "Hlatikhulu South Slope" ( detailed trip report ). We intentionally avoided the dense clusters as we anticipated then already that the government-funded teams would eventually get to those and that it would be a better allocation of resources/labour for us to work on less dense areas around it. We never did any follow up area in our initial little project area there, and as we had anticipated, some work by the government-funded teams has already been done there.

I took this photo in 2016. You can clearly see the dead trees that have been treated (these used to be healthy trees like in your photos). Our initial "Hlatikhulu South Slope" project area is to the left of the very dense, red-coloured cluster, you can make out some dead trees on the grassy slopes with the lighter shade of green (and most of those dead trees were not treated by us). KZN Wildlife's progress in the Monk's Cowl is looking really positive and no doubt they know about the nearby dense cluster shown in your photographs. Hopefully they will get to those.


The ones in the Mhlwazini were the very first ones we tackled as VE in 2011 - this is were the "Pine Tree Project" was born. We did a follow up trip there in 2015 during which several adult trees were treated, along with about 360 smaller trees which had sprung up since 2011! In 2015 we probably removed in the order of 80-90% of the regrowth, so your final two photographs are showing what continued to grow since then along with what has grown up fresh. This is the reason we have to do follow up to our project sites, and it looks like Mhlwazini is due for another visit!

Here is a repost of post #67309 of this thread for interest:

intrepid wrote: Progress of the pines in the upper Mhlwazini which can be see on the way to Keith Bush Camp. The is the
hallmark of VE's pine tree work - where it all began.



In 2015 we literally still treated hundreds of saplings which had sprung up after the initial treatment in 2011.