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Authorities have six months to contain alien invasive plant
By KAMCILLA PILLAY
Durban
Conservationists have welcomed a Durban court ruling giving environmental authorities six months to plan and implement measures to contain alien invasive plant.
The SA National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi) said government departments and municipalities had failed to develop plans to tackle invasive species or lacked the capacity to deal with the scourge, which threatened the survival of indigenous species and posed a threat to human health.
The Kloof Conservancy applied to the courts in December 2012 to compel the minister of water and environmental affairs to publish and apply the national list of invasive alien plants.
The conservancy, a voluntary association with about 300 members, said at the time that the list should have been published by August 2006, and the state’s failure to do this threatened efforts to protect an important natural resource.
The Durban High Court ruled on October 22 that, in that time, the KZN MEC for Agriculture, Environmental Affairs and Rural Development had to appoint environment inspectors to control these plants.
Welcoming the ruling, Sanbi told the Daily News that the finalisation of the regulations was “extremely important”.
Chief director of the organisation, John Donaldson, said that across the world, invasive species were regarded as one of the major threats to indigenous species and that the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – commissioned by the UN in 2000 to assess the consequences of ecosystem change – ranked invasive species as one of the top four threats.
“There is no dispute that monitoring, control and eradication plans need to be in place as soon as possible. This needs to be done in a co-ordinated way based on the best available evidence, providing guidance on priorities, and identifying good practice for dealing with invasives,” he said.
He said that “organs of state”, including national departments (such as Defence, Agriculture, SANParks), provincial government and municipalities, have not dealt with invasive species management plans before and may not have the capacity to develop plans.
“It also requires considerable co-ordination because invasive species don’t follow political boundaries. Effective control will require everyone to work together. The period of six months will be a significant challenge because it drastically shortens the time frame outlined in the regulations.”
Donaldson was talking about a set of regulations published in August 2014 which provided a stepwise approach to the development of management plans.
“The first stage was to prepare guidelines and the regulations stipulate that these must be prepared one year after the regulations were published (ie August 2015). The second stage was that organs of state were expected to then prepare monitoring, control and eradication plans based on the guidelines. The regulations gave them one year to complete this process (ie by August 2016).”
He explained that scientific evidence made a distinction between alien species (those that originate outside South Africa) and invasive species (alien species that invade natural ecosystems and have some form of impact).
“There are various ways in which invasive species can be harmful to the environment. They displace indigenous species and change the function of natural ecosystems. For example, pines and wattle plants that have transformed natural systems across the country, increasing fire risk and reducing water flows.”
He said that they out-competed indigenous species so that South Africa lost some of its indigenous plants and wildlife.
“They may be poisonous and cause losses of animals and livestock, as in the case of Parthemium or ‘famine weed’ in KwaZulu-Natal; they can be dangerous to people as well as wildlife (invasive mosquitoes and snakes); and they can cause disease in humans, wildlife, crops and domestic livestock (microbial species, insect pests).”
Donaldson said there were “thousands of alien species” in the country.
“Most garden plants and aquarium fish are alien but only around 526 have been listed as invasive. This is not an exact number because the lists include some groups of organisms. The lists are based on some form of preliminary assessment of their status. In other words, the regulations are designed to focus on the species that pose the greatest risk.”