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Riverwalking … Panga in Hand

Volunteer Ring Barking - Riverwalking - Precious Tree Project
Volunteer Ring Barking - Riverwalking - Precious Tree Project

Volunteer Ring Barking Session: For those of us living in the Garden Route, we are fortunate to have our landscape divided up by glorious rivers that flow down from the mountains into the sea. Unfortunately, most of these rivers and their riverbeds are choked up with highly invasive trees and vegetation not indigenous to the area, especially Australian Wattle, Australian Blackwood and the more highly invasive Madeira Vine. They suck up this valuable water source, create competition for our own indigenous trees, and their presence limits the natural biodiversity of the area. Little or no management of their growth by the relevant land owners /local authorities has allowed them to flourish.

Precious Tree Project and our enthusiastic group of volunteers took a short trek through the forest down to Kaaimans River on Saturday morning and spent time ring-barking Wattle and Blackwoods along the riverbed. As labour intensive as it is, ring-barking is inexpensive and an effective natural method of slowly eliminating these trees without harming the environment.

Today we walked back knowing we had made a positive impact… however small; but definitely much bigger than the blisters on our hands. Eina!