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We’re winning the battle against the aliens!

iPhithi’s alien invasive plants had become a huge problem and were harming its beauty as a local nature reserve.

Our gardener Clever has been hard at work chopping down and applying topical herbicide to the ginger lilies that were dominating the undergrowth in the reserve. He’s also been spraying the Sword Fern with a selective herbicide. The results are becoming easy to see. You can see clearly through the undergrowth and the natural understory grasses and herbs are recovering, as shown in these images.

The selective herbicide kills the ferns only without affecting the grasses in the surrounding herbage. And the topical herbicide is applied by painting to the cut stems of the ginger lily so that it’s used economically and is safe to surrounding plants.

We will follow up with targeted spraying of new shooting ginger lily with selective herbicide so that it grows back more slowly (or even not at all). The idea is to knock back the aliens and give the natural indigenous plants chance to form a strong community and outgrow any aliens that may emerge in future.

Left is the indigenous Tree Fern, Alsophila dregei. Right, the invasive alien Australian Tree Fern, Sphaeropteris cooperi

Visitors may have noticed that the reserve has a lot of attractive tree ferns. What might not be so obvious is that is that many of them are invasive aliens. The local indigenous ferns have stems covered in old fronds; the Australian ones, with their naked stems, look neater. But they’re a threat because they hybridize with our indigenous tree ferns and harm their biodiversity. The aliens have to go! If you notice that some tree ferns are disappearing, it’s because it’s part of our environmental management plan for the reserve.

Nick Liebenberg with his trained Rangers

Nick Liebenberg and Anno Torr with the PEP crew

We are now getting plenty of help from Nick Liebenberg of the Biodiversity Management Dept and his colleagues. The Department of Public Works’ ‘PEP’ (Public Employment Programme) is funded by government and administered by the African Environmental Services Institute (AESI). It provides labour and a corps of Wildlife Rangers trained by the SA Wildlife College. With their help the alien clearing is progressing well.

We think you’ll be pleased with the progress so far. We hope to do a lot more and upgrade all the walkways in the reserve. We plan to re-route the path on the north side of the reserve away from the dam spillway so that it meets the river further downstream and is safer for walkers.

To achieve all this, we need funds and volunteers. Please support your local nature reserve by visiting it and paying the entry fee. If you’re a local resident, consider Household + iPhithi membership, which gains you free entrance. If you would like to be involved in running the reserve, you could join the Management Committee. Just drop us a line. annotorr50@gmail.com or steve@butterflygear.co.za

Thanks!

The Committee