NATURALISING AUSTRALIAN TREES IN SOUTH AFRICA - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 209

African National Congress took power in 1994, the environmental regulations
regarding exotic plantations suddenly changed: the goal of water conservation,
rather than that of economic growth, began to dictate the regulation of plantations.
The newly created Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) classified
plantations of exotic trees as a 'stream flow reduction activity' that had to meet
stringent criteria before being given government approval (Showers, 2010: 312).
South Africa's plantation estate has stopped expanding and most growth is focused
on less invasive, quick-growing eucalypts. As of 2007-2008, newly created
plantations were composed primarily of Eucalyptus (74.3 per cent), with softwood
pines (14 per cent) and Acacia (10.5 per cent) declining in importance (Republic
of South Africa, Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 2008: xiii).
Some 48.6 per cent of these eucalypts were E. grandis , the same species that Maiden
sent to Hutchins in 1896. The amount of commercial plantation land under the
direction of the government has plummeted to 62,000 hectares in 2010 and 100
per cent of all new plantations are created by the private sector (Department of
Water Affairs and Forestry, 2009: 39).
A once powerful private and public forestry sector has taken a back seat to
resurgent environmentalism and a new government emphasis on funding studies
on native ecology and climate change. The public now has a 'neutral to negative'
opinion of the forestry industry and forestry enrolments in universities have
declined (ibid.: 41). In the place of forestry research, there has been a growing
interest among environmental scientists in the study of 'invasive' and 'naturalised'
Australian genera and species of trees. Australian trees are hunted down and
exterminated by government employees funded by Working for Water, a
programme founded in 1995 and funded by the DWAF (Neely, 2010: 869-887).
Public opinion has swung in favour of these eradication programmes: popular
discussions of Australian trees in newspapers sometimes display a powerful
combination of ecological nationalism and xenophobia (Comaroff and Comaroff,
2001). Just as many nineteenth-century colonists enthusiastically wanted to believe
only the best things about Australian trees, in a reversal of fortunes, many twenty-
first-century South Africans want to believe only the worst.
Conclusion: the past and present
The currently popular anti-exotic rhetoric of many South Africans is at odds with
the contribution of plantations and timber products to South Africa's economy and
the more nuanced scientific findings about biological invasion held by the scientific
community (van Wilgen, 2010). Australian trees retain a substantial ecological
presence and remain an important part of the economy in South Africa. What
happens to these trees is the topic of heated public and scientific debate. In 2011,
the creation of plantations of exotic trees is seen as largely taboo by a South African
public that seeks to protect its indigenous flora in order to promote tourism,
preserve the nation's natural heritage and conserve critical water supplies. Yet
Australian trees, even though many in the public strongly dislike them, will