Cycad rescue plan launched

2001-11-13 13:09

Pietermaritzburg - The Wildlands Trust has announced an R80 000 grant to launch a cycad research project with the eventual aim of ensuring the survival of these endangered plants.

The research project will be carried out under the auspices of KZN Wildlife's Threatened Plant Conservation Unit.

The cycad is a living fossil, an extremely primitive plant that is in great demand as a collector's item. This demand has, ironically, increased its value as a black-market commodity and a thriving underground trade exists in these plants that has led to its becoming even rarer.

"The first step towards any kind of conservation is knowledge," says Wildlands Trust CEO Andrew Venter, "So the first step in conserving the cycad in KZN is to gather all the knowledge we have about these plants."

The research project, therefore, will begin by collating all the existing data on cycads, including numbers of plants of the different species, their location and habitat.

This will also include an inventory of existing legislation and conservation measures. Field work will gather data about the ongoing threats to cycad populations in the province.

"There is quite a body of information regarding the existence of cycads on private property and in game reserves," says Venter, "but the Wildlands Trust is particularly interested in the occurrence of cycads in the traditional areas as well. It has always been our philosophy to include rural people in our work as much as possible."

"We also need to look at the legal side," says project manager Brigitte Church, "we want to examine current legislation in order to come up with a better policy on cycad protection. There are a lot of grey areas which we need to define more clearly. For instance, we want to be able to lay groundrules for what happens to confiscated cycads, and things like that."

The second phase of the project will be to analyse all the data in order to come up with a management plan for cycad survival. This will include facets like the artificial cultivation of cycads, management plans for privately-owned land as well as game reserves and tribal areas.

"If we look at the bigger picture," says Venter, "there might even be the possibility of cultivating cycads on a large scale in rural areas as an empowerment initiative. Hopefully, this will have the result of flooding the market and eliminating the danger to cycads in the wild."

The third phase of the project is an education campaign aimed at the public, which will take the form of brochures and posters." This is only the beginning," continues Venter. "We are hoping that our research and management plan forms a blue-print for other provinces that have cycad populations that are under threat.

As the Wildlands Trust, obviously, our main aim is to involve the local rural communities in our cycad management plan, so that they can also become the keepers of this natural heritage."

The Wildlands Trust is an independent fund-raising and project management organisation concerned with conservation-based community development in Kwa-Zulu Natal.

- News24