Working for Water in the Klein River Catchment Area - editorial in Stanford 150th anniversay booklet

about 400 words - my first draft and I need to run it by Tarron Dry and James Coetzee for their comments.

If you can send it back with highlighs of the things you find intersting, I can work on it over the weekend.

Have a great evening.
Cheers,
Philippa

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Working for Water in the Klein River Catchments

 

by Philippa E Castle

www.philippacastle.blogspot.com

 

 

The essence of the Working for Water project under the auspices of D.W.A.F. (Dept. of Water & forestry) is “Water Conservation through Poverty Alleviation and Alien Eradication.”

 

According to Tarron Dry, senior Project Co-coordinator for the Klein River Catchments, the core objectives are to approve areas for clearing from a conservation point of view, namely, water conservation and biodiversity.

 

Poverty alleviation goes hand in hand with social skills & physical development in terms of free training given to alien clearing teams.  The teams are set up with start up tools, which they buy over time.  Assistance is given with regard to hire purchase of vehicles as well as all other requirements and aspects of setting up full businesses and creating effective alien clearing teams.  Each team leader is awarded 24 clearing contracts over a minimum period of two years.

 

All Schedule 1, 2 & 3 aliens are removed through a process of spraying target specific poisons, cutting, felling and stacking.  The individual land-owners are responsible for obtaining fire permits to burn the cleared aliens.  The Govt. funded clearing project for each area includes 2 follow up cleans over a period of about 3 years, after which the responsibility for keeping the area free from alien plants reverts to the land-owner.  The land-owner, by way of contract, is also obliged to allow re-growth of indigenous plant species for an additional period of 3 years.

 

The Working for Water project received an estimated R1m funding for the 2007/8 Annual Plan of Operation (APO) to tackle the alien re-growth in the burned areas of the Klein River Catchments.  The funding for the entire project encompassing the whole Overstrand Municipality is estimated to be in the region of R3m.

 

As with many Govt. projects there is a tight trail of red tape, for obvious good reason, however, it is frustrating for the land-owners in the region who sign the relevant applications for clearing assistance, have their farms surveyed and mapped for clearing and are then informed, nearly a year down the line, that they are still not on the APO.  One hesitates to ask if these demarcated areas are, in reality, going to be cleared.

 

James Coetzee, a Nat. Parks consultant, says the WFW project’s initial focus needs to be the 30m area along each bank of the Klein River area as well as its main tributaries.  Sporadic alien eradication higher up is simply not being effective enough in contributing to the health of the Klein River.