Meet the man who wrote 119 articles about Glenwood’s Pigeon Valley

GLENWOOD resident and chairperson of Friends of Pigeon Valley, Crispin Hemson has contributed 119 articles to the Berea Mail in a weekly series entitled: Exploring Pigeon Valley. For the 120th article, the Berea Mail took a walk in the valley with Hemson, to find out more about his passion for nature and how he has managed to find news on the valley each week over the past two years.

The nature enthusiast said he visits Pigeon Valley once or twice a day.

“There are 15 to 20 days in the year when I am not here. It’s very interesting and diverse. In Great Britain and the island of Ireland, there are about 33 indigenous tree species. Here there are 110 species in this small 10 hectare nature reserve,” said Hemson as he pointed out a rare Natal Elm tree in the reserve.

“There are a couple of other very rare trees here. One has never been clearly identified. We know what family of tree it is in, but we are not sure if it is a hybrid or a species from further north in Africa. The Natal Elm and Natal Forest Loquat are also extremely rare and are seldom found elsewhere in South Africa,” he said.

Also read: Exploring Pigeon Valley: The surging creepers

The nature reserve is largely what drew Hemson to the area, when he moved to Glenwood in 1991 when he worked at the then University of Natal (University of KwaZulu Natal) Howard College Campus.

“Pigeon Valley was a part of my desire to be here – to be near a natural area,” he said.

Shortly after moving to the area, Hemson and his twin brother took up work in the nature reserve.

“One of the things I became involved in was removing alien invasive plants because there was a severe outbreak of ipmoea indica. You have to pull out each root. There are probably millions of roots in the park. Sometimes if you pull it the right way you can get the roots out. The roots can go fairly deep. Fortunately it’s not very thorny,” he said.

Amazingly, Hemson is still working to clear alien invasive plants now, some 30 years later.

“It’s physically very challenging. You have to go into thick bush and try not to get too badly scratched. There are various ways to go about it,” he said.

Reflecting on his articles, Hemson said he focuses his articles on birds and plants as well as the interactions between the different ‘residents’ of Pigeon Valley.

Also read: Exploring Pigeon Valley: Fiscal Flycatcher

“There’s a pair of black sparrowhawks that nest in the reserve. They tend to dominate things quite a lot. They make a lot of noise, especially from the time their young are born. I once saw a black sparrowhawk at the bird bath at the entrance to the valley when a young buck came to drink there. It was really interesting to see the interactions. When there is rain followed by warm weather, you get these flying ants, the swarming out. Then it’s fantastic because you can sit and be surrounded by birds,” he reminisced.

Currently working at Durban University of Technology, Hemson heads up the International Centre of Nonviolence. While his day job may seem worlds away from his passion for nature, Hemson says there are many parallels.

“Humans are part of nature, so we can’t protect nature without protecting humans. However, humans, like any species, can go rogue. We have imposed damaging ideas of ‘development’ on the world that treat nature and people as something to be exploited. The idea that we have to give up on important things like the environment to achieve economic growth is misguided and dangerous,” said Hemson.

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