A staggering 104 000 indigenous trees have been planted at the Buffelsdraai Landfill Site near Verulam in less than two years.
The Buffelsdraai Landfill Site Community Reforestation Project was set up by the eThekwini Municipality to form part of its programme in achieving a “climate neutral” 2010 FIFA World Cup in Durban. The project goal was to plant 62 500 indigenous trees to establish a carbon sink in Durban’s newest landfill site, and this goal has been exceeded by 66%.
Nondumiso Khumalo supervises the planting team of eight people on site and since October 2008 she has worked towards this goal. Her sense of achievement and that of her team’s is tangible: “In the beginning it was difficult, so I worked out how many trees we needed to plant per month, then per week and then per day to achieve the goal; and now I go and stand and see all the trees, and it is amazing to see that we can do something I did not realise could be done” she said.
The target of 62 500 trees planted was exceeded through a few special events involving larger scale plantings that happened over a few days. For four days before the 2010 Comrades Marathon, 50 people from the neighbouring communities of Buffelsdraai and Osindisweni were contracted to plant 22 000 trees, a tree representing each entrant in the race. Khumalo’s team prepared all the trees for planting and co-ordinated and supervised these intensive planting days. Disadvantaged community members were able to earn while seeing firsthand the value of having the growing forest as their neighbour.
Said Nicci Diederichs, Co-ordinator of the Greening Durban 2010 Programme for the eThekwini Municipality,“Our original target was exceeded only as a result of the extreme commitment and hard work of both Wildlands Conservation Trust as the municipality’s project implementation partner, and the local communities that have made the project a reality.”
Simphiwe Mkhize, a planting team member since the start of the project in November 2008, says the team can plant up to 1000 trees in one day. “We have planted many, many trees in summer when there was a lot of rain. Some days we are transplanting and bagging the trees in the nursery, and in winter we have found it very difficult without rain.” he said.
Mkhize explains that the trees in this area serve as a buffer between the landfill site and the community: “The trees are helping us with shade and are protecting the people from the bad air at the dump, that is why we are planting the indigenous trees.”
With a background in conservation, Khumalo enjoys working outdoors and is seeing the impact their work is having on the environment. “Much of this area was covered in sugar cane before, and with chemicals and burning the animals stayed away. Now when we are planting we are seeing many small mammals coming back. We have seen mole rat, common duiker, elephant shrew and banded mongoose. I also enjoy working with the communities that live next to this area and involving them in what we are doing. It is important that they understand why we are planting trees.”
This high level of success and the multitude of benefits that have arisen out of this project have created sufficient motivation for the eThekwini Municipality to fund a second phase of the project. This phase, which started on 1 July 2010, will see a further 100,000 trees in the ground by June 2011, nearly doubling the carbon sink and the socio-economic benefits for local communities. This will create a new forest which has the capacity to sink between 20,000 and 30,000 tonnes of CO2 over a 20 year period.
“The project has shown far greater benefits than simply the establishment of a new carbon sink: with the amazing number of income generating opportunities for local communities in need, biodiversity conservation and catchment restoration benefits that have been created, this project has shown that reforestation is an excellent way of achieving climate protection in a socially and ecologically responsible way.” said Diederichs.
WILDTRUST (registered as the Wildlands Conservation Trust - IT No: 4329/1991/PMB)