13 000 trees in 3 days: A Comrades Story

13 000 trees in 3 days: That’s how many trees official Comrades charity, the Wildlands Conservation Trust planed to plant as part of their Comrades ‘Releaf’ campaign this year. The KZN-based organisation aimed to plant a tree for every runner in an ultra-marathon of a different kind. Not only did they reach their target, they exceeded it and planted 16 000 tree’s in the three days leading up to South Africa’s ‘Ultimate Human Race’. Sixty community members were employed from the neighbouring Buffelsdraai and Osindisweni communities to plant the trees.

12 809 runners registered for the 2009 Comrades Marathon held recently and the trees were planted in their honour in a 750ha buffer zone around the Buffelsdraai Landfill Site near Verulam. Reforestation around the landfill site has already begun as part of the eThekwini’s Municipality’s 2010 FIFA World Cup™ programme to help mitigate the carbon emissions associated with hosting the event, and this initiative has given the project a huge boost.

The first tree was planted by South African Comrades champion Fawa Mentoor and Wildlands CEO, Dr Andrew Venter; a symbol of sport and conservation uniting to make a difference. All the partner representatives, journalists and friends of Wildlands then got stuck in, including Comrades Chairman, Dave Dixon, Miss Earth representatives, Bianca Records and Michelle Olivier and Greening Durban 2010 co-ordinator Nicci Diederichs.

The environmental benefits of reforestation are vital to the area. Dr Andrew Venter, CEO of Wildlands explained: “There are two primary benefits: biodiversity restoration and climate change mitigation. The ultimate aim is to restore 580 ha of the 750 ha buffer zone to indigenous forest [the remaining land will be restored to natural grasslands and wetlands]; green space that will be very valuable in twenty years time when this area will be surrounded by concrete. The forest will also act as a carbon sink, sequestering thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide over a period of 20 years, mitigating the effects of climate change.”

The Wildlands Conservation Trust has been one of the official Comrades charities for more than 10 years now. “This year we wanted to make a real difference, something that will leave a legacy, for our projects, but also for the runners. Our partner, the Bonitas Medical Fund, came up with the concept of setting a Comrades record by planting the 13 000 trees”, said Comrades Campaign Manager Heidi Mocke. “The funds raised by the campaign and by runners who run for the Wildlands will go towards our Indigenous Trees for Life Programme”.

Indigenous Trees for Life is aimed atgreening communities and restoring degraded forests and at the same time uplifting poor and vulnerable children and adults. The ‘tree-preneurs’ grow indigenous trees from seed, care for the plants until they reach a certain height and then trade them back to Wildlands for food, clothes, bicycles, agricultural goods and even school and university fees. The trees they grow are then used for projects like the Buffelsdraai Landfill Site Community Reforestation Project. There are now more than 3000 tree-preneurs in 21 communities around KZN, Mpumalanga and Gauteng.

Photos:

1. SA running champion, Fawa Mentoor and Wildlands Conservation Trust CEO, Dr Andrew Venter plant the first tree at the 13 000 tree-planting marathon outside Verulum. Some of the indigenous trees planted include Natal Mahogany, Coral Trees, Bush Willow and various species of Acacia.

2. Phillipo Faralla & Jackie Hadingham, Wildlands ‘Green Champions’. The couple raised just over R5000 for the Comrades charity this year.

3. Katy Caldis, Mdumiseni Zulu & Peta Smuts from Bonitas Medical Fund with the Buffelsdraai planting team on the first day of planting.

“Hawu – ukudla okungaka!” “So much food!”

“Hawu – ukudla okungaka!”, or a wide-eyed “So much food!” was the reaction of one tree-preneur as she approached the recent KwaJobe tree store early in April. And indeed, this store was the biggest the KwaJobe community has seen to date, with community members trading up to R90 000 worth in trees. It is a place where money does actually grow on trees: it is not the amount of cash in your pocket that will determine how much you can buy, but the amount of trees you’ve grown.

The tree stores are part of the Indigenous Trees For Life (ITFL) project of the Wildlands Conservation Trust, which encourage disadvantaged communities to recognize the value of indigenous trees. People part of the project –called tree-preneurs – collect indigenous tree seeds, nurture them into young trees and then trades the trees back to the trust for goods available once every few months in the tree stores. Goods available are foodstuffs like rice, maize and beans, but also other necessities like soap, shampoo and school uniforms. Some order JoJo water tanks through the project so they can water vegetable gardens at home and the children order shiny yellow bicycles, 100 trees a piece, so they can whiz to school, friends and work on the dusty tracks of their rural community.

Tree-preneurs started arriving as early as 7:30am at the KwaJobe tree store on April 7th, with wheelbarrows – also bought with trees – in tow to carry away their shopping. Each tree-preneur is given a grocery list of the stock available and a credit slip to indicate the amount of trees they have traded to the Trust, and then has the opportunity to browse through the store with a facilitator who helps calculate the tree value of the items they choose.

The tree-preneurs shop wisely. While there are nice clothes and shoes for sale donated by Foschini and Mr Price, they head for the food first: maize, sugar beans, rice and tinned fish.

If there is tree credit left after that, they might pick out a nice pair of shoes or a colourful top. Gogos put a guiding hand on the back of young children to make sure they also buy school necessities like a uniform or a new pair of school shoes. For most, the food is what makes the difference. Tree-preneur Mrs Busi Mthethwa, who joined the project two years ago, laughs with joy at the variety of soups on offer. “I am so happy, because I will be eating stew tonight!” she says.

The KwaJobe community is one of the first communities to have been involved with ITFL, and Program Manager Charmaine Veldsman says setting up tree stores is about addressing the most basic needs of the community.
‘At the end of the day I stood at the last checkpoint helping a woman count her goods, and as she walked off with her arms full of food, she turned around and said to us, in Zulu: ‘Tonight I won’t be hungry.’ To me, that is what makes this project so special – we are literally helping people survive.’

The next tree store at KwaJobe, run by Project Manager Graeme Farley, is scheduled for the end of May 2009.

Top left: A community nursery where the trees are kept once they have been collected from the tree-preneurs’ homesteads. The tree-preneurs are given credit notes when their trees are collected which they bring to the tree stores to ‘buy’ the goods they need.

Centre: Mrs Busi Mthembu with her wheelbarrow of goods traded at the Tree Store.