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The changing landscape
H
ow different must South Africa have looked when our
forebears first set foot here? Apart from the building of
towns, cities, roads, railways, dams and other infrastructure, and the settlement and cultivation of land, how must
it have looked to see herds of innumerable quagga and
wildebeest, impala and elephant roaming free. And across what
kind of landscape did they roam?
For there's no doubt that our meanderings about the subcontinent have rendered it very different to what it was before we all
arrived here. Certainly, our forebears weren't very adept at
acting as custodians of their environment for future generations
and we may wonder if we, in fact, are any better. And a
changing climate has probably done its bit, too, to alter the
landscape.
A number of developments recently make this subject worth
pondering on.
We all know that the quagga has been extinct for at least a
century. This zebra-donkey lookalike was wiped out by hunters
long before anybody cared about nature conservation or
species loss, thereby joining the dodo and countless other
species driven to extinction, (and possibly, soon, to be joined by
the rhino and elephant.)
The good news is that the quagga is back! Geneticists in the
Western Cape have been feverishly breeding away over the past
few years and have now arrived at a point where they have a
number of animals which closely resemble, in all physical
features, the original.
Nineteenth-century scientists also weren't much focussed on the
effects of invasive aliens and southern Africa received its full
share of these. In this, it must be said, southern Africa was no
different to anywhere else with gardeners and horticulturists
worldwide swapping plants with gay abandon. London’s Kew
Gardens, with its hot houses full of exotic plants from all over
the globe, is living testament to this wanton trade.
Back home, the Boer War saw to it that our grasslands and
roadsides would forever be infested with cosmos, khakibos and
blackjack which arrived from South America in the fodder
imported to feed the British Army's horses during the conflict,
while the mining industry saw to it that vast forests of Australian
wattle or bluegum trees would be planted for pit-props and
other uses.
These fast-growing, deep-rooted trees have been a feature of
our roadsides for generations, even having songs written about
them. But they have one problem: thirst. A big bluegum tree
sucks up literally thousands of litres of water, and has therefore
been declared a threat to our groundwater resources.
The jacaranda tree, first planted in Pretoria in the late 1800s, is
a South American import, as is the less-desirable bugweed.
Maize, now the staple foodstuff of most of the population, was
yet another American import,
and gardens throughout the
country are adorned with
exotic shrubs and trees from
faraway places.
Nobody seems to worry much
any more about the effects of
blackjack and khakibos on
grazing and fodder (hell,
khakibos has even been found
to be useful as a natural
pyrethrin) while cosmos,
growing alongside the roads at
Easter has become a source of
wonderment and joy to
flower lovers.
In recent years Highveld
residents have noticed the
spread eastwards through Gauteng of the pink-flowered
pompom weed (another South American) and the slightly
darker blue heliotrope (yet another South American) and some
have become vociferous in pointing out the dangers of letting
these plants spread unchecked. (Others, of course, either
through pig-ignorance or laziness, just let the blooms spread
unchecked.)
How long will it be, therefore, before people say “oh, how
lovely all that pink looks!” in the same way that they exclaim
admiringly over fields of cosmos?
If you look carefully in the valleys west of Pretoria you will see
the next invader slowly making its way eastwards. It's a tall dark
green plant with H