The Pine Tree Project

Inculcate good values in the heart of a boy, and even when he gets older he will not turn aside from them! Gr8 work.

I saw there's a big number of mature pine trees in the Thuthumi pass valley. Even on the Eastern slopes of the Ndumeni Dome, quite high up. I think they must've spread from the old plantation under the Old Fire Lookout years ago.

How well do those copper nails work to kill a tree? Would it not be a good idea to carry a few of those with on a hike?
www.ehow.com/how_5507466_kill-trees-copper-nails.html

Some background on how pine trees came to be a problem in the northern Drakensberg. There is also more information on the 'alien invasion' thread.

The Cathedral Peak Forest Research Station was proposed in 1935. The area to be planted with trees comprised four stream catchments on top of the little berg on the approach to Organ Pipes Pass. The original project was to test the effects of afforestation on water supply, and commenced in 1938, with a break during World War ll. Mike’s Pass (named after Mike de Villiers, the Forest Officer at the time), the spectacular access road to the research area was completed in May 1949 and the first pine trees (pinus patula, a relatively fast growing tree from Mexico) were planted in about 1950. By 1952 the gauging weirs to measure the runoff in the streams and the buildings were completed, and research commenced. The experiment proved that afforestation was detrimental to stream flow, with an average reduction in runoff of 15% over 27 years, and the project was abandoned in the late 1970’s, having served it’s purpose and a section of the plantations being affected by fire.

My first hike in the Cathedral Peak area was up Mike’s Pass and Organ Pipes Pass in 1988, and some of the photos I took at the time show the pine plantations clearly. Below are some of these photos (scanned from the original photos in an album), with similar views from June 2013 showing the rehabilitation of the afforested area back to grassland, although the rehabilitated grassland is not back to the original condition.

















On the 1988 photo of the hill up the old lookout, some recent fire damage can be seen on the left, and some removal of the trees and rehabilitation on the right. On a subsequent visit to the area in 1993, all of the trees had been removed and rehabilitated.

It is widely recognised that these plantations were the main contributor to the current pine tree infestation problem, although there are also other sources in nearby areas; over the years seeds from these plantations were distributed by wind, animals and birds to neighbouring areas, and today we have the problem of the pine tree infestation over large portions of the surrounding berg area.