The trees of Tokai and Cecilia f

Instead, if we are going to believe the academic ideologues of Table Mountain National Park (henceforth referred to as TMNP), Fynbos shall grow there ! One rare kind in particular, of which 99.999 % of the citizens have never heard of. For this particular Fynbos 500,000 trees have to go forever, at least that is what the conservationists are hoping for if one believes they are that naive. We believe the real issue is money, not conservation. The Park's top management in our opinion just aims at more money and ever higher salaries. It is questionable whether they would have ever mentioned Biodiversity if World bank/GEF had not thrown millions of USD for that matter at them.

Latest research regarding Impact of Climate Change on Fynbos however suggests that Fynbos will retreat " into smaller and smaller areas" in the (cooler) mountain tops.

These two forests, Tokai and Cecilia, occupy a mere 2% (previously 1000ha) against approximately 98% Fynbos (43,000ha) .... but provide strong recreational value to the people of Cape Town. MTO the harvesting forest company would like to replant, but is not allowed to do so.

While international scientists give humankind another 50 years to minimize Green House Gas emissions or face extinction, Bret Myrdal, the manager of TMNP utters something of a 100 year plan for the Park ! ( or was it 250 years Mr. Myrdal ?), Dr. Tony Rebelo worries about Cape Flat Sand plants and Dr. Guy Preston ("We have to box clever and rather ensure support for the fight against far worse species.") is fighting his heroic war for water (or is it on water?) by cutting down every alien tree he can get his hands on. In matters of water guzzling, "invasive" pine trees, "fire adapted" Fynbos and varies other details of the forests and the environment we believe TMNP has in the past and still is persistently and deliberately misinforming the public !

The National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998 applies in our opinion also
to the actions of TMNP : "Environmental management must place people
and their needs at the forefront of its concern and serve their physical,
psychological, developmental, cultural and social interests equitably".

The Fynbos ideologues like to call the Tokai and Cecilia forests plantations since this term suggests they were planted to be harvested. We don't argue that. We appreciate that the pine trees are being harvested. Fast growing pine trees are a perfect carbon sink and produce - unlike Fynbos and Afro-montane trees- huge amounts of oxygen ! We only want them to be replanted and we would recommend to cut them in a different way, (as recommended by the FAO) so that the plantations become Permanent Forests.

SANParks and so-called conservationist Toni Rebelo show absolutely no respect for the living creatures and organisms who live presently in the Park and forests because they are deemed "aliens". They have killed the Thars and now they are going to kill the deer and they use propaganda which reminds us of South Africa's past. The Fynbos however, most likely, as shown here, will not grow again because the seeds were dormant in the soil for over 100 years . After the Fynbos in Tokai forest experiment has failed we must expect townhouses to "grow" there instead. The Park intends to release conservation land for housing : " Release of conservation land for low income housing is the pro-active way of dealing with land hunger and land invasion" Please see here the complete document! What "release" means is anybodies guess, but we expect someone will soon sign another contract and conservation of the rare Granite or Sand Plain Fynbos is not an issue anymore.

If the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry's (DWAF) "Exit Strategy" is executed as outlined there will be no forests in the Western Cape anymore. The famous Afro-montane trees, to which TMNP and SANParks like to refer to, will grow very slowly and only in certain ravines and Koloa's and can not replace them. The economic consequences for the province are described here. SANParks claimed first they planted already 20,000 new indigenous saplings. We were told by a SANParks employee that they estimate only ca. 9000 indigenous saplings survived so far. 9000 saplings would cover 10ha ! However, about 100 trees are cut per day, in total ca. 500,000 trees. One can easily figure out that SANParks can never replace these trees with indigenous trees, even if they wanted to.

The Cecilia and Tokai forests were planted by the early settlers to protect the indigenous timber resources of the Cape. These early "conservationists" sadly missed their target entirely, there is almost no indigenous forest left. It is ironic that today's conservationists want to eradicate these "alien" forests for the conservation of Biodiversity. We must expect them to fail again. After the forests are gone the last green slopes of Table Mountain will suffer the same erosion as had most other areas of the mountain. Wind force will increase, rain water will evaporate faster and chances are the Southern suburbs and the Peninsula will be transformed into a dry, treeless steppe in the further proceeding Global Warming.