Indigenous giants poisoned, cut down

THERE was an air of melancholy at Twilanga Retirement Village on Tuesday last week as two Natal Mahogany trees, estimated to be more than 40 years old, were cut down. The painful decision to cut the indigenous trees down was made by the management of the village. The trees are just behind the property of a local couple, who were saddened by their felling. The couple did not want to be named.

They have lived on the property for six and a half years, and believe the trees have been poisoned a number of times since in the past year. It is believed they were poisoned by a resident outside the village who was trying to secure a ‘sea view’.

Besides the trees on the retirement village’s property, three more outside it in a park have also been poisoned. Management of the village have tried to do everything to save the trees, including investigating the option of testing the soil, which did not prove to be a feasible option.

“We didn’t realise this was happening until we noticed one of the trees right outside our home start to lose leaves at a rapid pace. One half of the tree was just bare. We’ve lived here for more than six years and this was the first time we’d noticed anything like this,” he said.

An avid gardener, the uMhlanga resident also noticed that some of his grass and plants had started to wilt because of the poison.

“We believe the culprit is using a spray gun to coat the trees and poison them. The poison has also killed a patch of grass and some of the plants around it. We have tried everything we could to save the trees and we are sad to see them go. But they have been repeatedly poisoned over and over and we felt this was the only option we had left. It is the last thing we wanted to do,” he added.

The eThekwini Municipality’s parks department was called out to investigate the matter and deemed that all the trees had gone through natural decomposition and that white ants had invaded the trees.

However, this does not explain the rapid deterioration of several trees in close proximity to the couple’s home.

“One of the mahogany trees directly outside our property is nothing but a stump now. The reason the parks department came to that conclusion is because the way the tree dies seems to indicate there has been a white ant infestation. The bark dries up and then begins to peel off in chunks. The leaves fall off and the branches become bare,” he said.

His wife also expressed sadness at losing the evergreen giant, and summed up the situation succinctly by saying, “He has won”.

“The person who has poisoned the trees has ultimately gotten his way. We are also concerned about our health, we aren’t sure what chemicals are used in the poison but there is a strong tarmac-like smell coming from our back garden. We loved those trees.

“The culprit has no sympathy or respect for the environment or the old and aged, and we are incredibly sad to see it go,” she said.