Forestry and Water Conservation in South Africa by Brett Bennett & Fred Kruger

Author:Brett Bennett & Fred Kruger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ANU Press
Published: 2015-11-11T02:36:07+00:00

Figure 11. Woodcutters participating in the allotment of trees for their extraction, Knysna Forest, 1926.

Seymour Laughton describes the procedure: each woodcutter draws a numbered disc from a hat, ‘[t]he holder of number one has the first choice. He shouts out the number of the tree he wants and its species and his name … They proceed thus until the man holding the highest number has his turn … they work their way back in reverse order … until all the trees have been allotted.’ The process is supervised so that each allotment for the year approximates 700 cubic feet, but not more.

Source: George Museum; photographer unknown.

Foresters lacked the scientific information to justify the policies they promoted. They lacked necessary data on the growth rates of the different species of tree, and they needed to adapt their silviculture better to the different types of forest encountered, while assuring successful regeneration in and rehabilitation of the forest after over a century of misuse. Efforts to regenerate valuable species, such as Yellowwood (Afrocarpus falcatus and Podocarpus latifolius), Stinkwood (Ocotea bullata), and Ironwood (Olea laurifolia) had proved difficult. Cleared or overworked parts of the forests—‘the wounds caused by … heavy exploitation’—were slow to recover, becoming infested with shrubby weeds.76 Attempts to rehabilitate these by transplanting indigenous trees and by planting Tasmanian Blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon) had yielded little success.

Agricultural, botanical and forestry researchers in South Africa agreed in 1920 on the need to pursue research across departments to solve fundamental problems relating to indigenous tree management.77 Attempts to foster closer cooperation between Pole-Evans’s Plant Industry Division and the Forestry Department began with joint meetings to discuss these issues,78 and in 1922, the department appointed John Phillips to study the Knysna Forest, at the Diepwalle Forest Research Station. Phillips’s subsequent experiences in Knysna shaped his criticisms of forestry in the 1930s, and are valuable to study more closely because he became one of the strongest critics of prevailing forest policy and practice, and played a key role challenging forestry ideas at the 1935 British Empire Forestry Conference.

John Phillips grew up outside of Grahamstown in what is now the Eastern Cape Province. He became interested in forestry after participating in the pro-conservation Boy Scouts. While employed as a pupil forester by the Forestry Department in the ‘magic mountain country’ of the Pirie and Amatola forests near King Williams’ Town, his aptitude, and the encouragement of a mentor, R. W. Rose Innes, encouraged him to study botany and forestry at Edinburgh University, as a student sponsored by the department.79 At Edinburgh, he devoted himself to botany, studying under the tutelage of the then influential morphologists Isaac Bayley Balfour and Frederick Orpen Brower. Phillips was influenced by their approach to botany, which focused on studying a plant’s evolutionary history to understand its attributes and distribution. Phillips also engaged with the nascent field of ecology, and was especially attracted to ideas of the Nebraska ecologist Fredric Clements. Clements famously developed the theory of the climatically determined climax community and ecological

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