Four groups took hands to take the good work forward that has been done to rehabilitate the Eugene Marais Park grassland in Groenkloof during Project Invader Plant Control.
Project coordinator and retired entomologist Alan Urban thanked the volunteer weedbusters for their determined efforts, the Friends of Groenkloof and Klapperkop Nature Reserves and the Friends of Kruin Park for equipment, and the Groenkloof Residents’ Association for crucial funding.
Urban said they recently resumed their attempt to rehabilitate the grassland by controlling bush encroachment by weeping wattle.
Vigorous bush encroachment by the indigenous weeping wattle or huilboom (peltophorum africanum) is displacing grassland species in the park.
He said after a previous attempt, some stumps have started growing again.
He explained that by using the method of coppicing, they cut and painted largish weeping wattle with herbicide and reduced the stems to low berms. “This should benefit the grassland plants and their associated animals,” he said.
The yellow daisy (felicia mossamedensis), and crane’s bill (monsonia angustifolia) and hairy darkling beetle (lagria sp.) are examples of grassland species in Eugene Marais Park.
For Urban, as someone who loves nature, it is vital to keep this kind of project ongoing.
The control of invasive plants has been a sustainable project for ten years, according to him.
“We must give our indigenous fauna and flora a chance of survival and this is the way to do it. To keep your hand on the problem is the way forward,” said Urban.
The conservation of grasslands is especially important to him.
“Our grasslands are disappearing, and are precious because they contain more non-grass plant species than grasses and numerous associated animal species are negatively impacted by this,” said Urban. “We can never really eradicate the invasive plants but we can suppress them and therefore it is important to have such hacks on invasive plants on a regular basis. We must keep on encouraging biodiversity.”
Urban also promotes the yearly Bio Blitz in the park. By participating in the international City Nature Challenge, residents are encouraged to showcase biodiversity in urban areas such as parks.
Photographs by volunteers taking part in the challenge are loaded onto an app, iNaturalist, creating an international database of plants and animals, as well as insect species in areas.
A competition to see which city’s nature volunteers have loaded the most observations forms part of the challenge.
Pretoria resident, Annette Odendaal, recorded 140 plant, animal and insect species during the three-day challenge in April in the Etienne Marais Park which was one of various park communities from where observations could be logged in Tshwane.
Last year, 1 524 observations were logged from Pretoria onto the iNaturalist app during the challenge in May with the morning glory plant species, guinea fowls, lantana plant species, as well as Cape starlings among the observations most logged by participants. The winner in Tshwane logging 213 observations was Lezanne Rossouw.
The winner of the challenge in South Africa was Cape Town, with 52 468 observations logged.
– Click here to learn more about the City Nature Challenge: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-southern-africa-2023
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