The foundations of the forestry industry

The vital contribution trees make towards sustaining our habitable environment is a fact acknowledged the world over, with many countries having a dedicated ‘arbor day’ on their national calendars. South Africa is one of the most enthusiastic proponents of this fact, dedicating not just a day, but an entire week – always the first week of September – to the education and encouragement of its citizens to plant and care for trees. Interestingly, the country has been celebrating the importance and beauty of trees for well over three decades, with the first Arbor Day being observed in 1983; it was only in 1999 that it was extended from a day to a week.

As we prepare to celebrate this year’s Arbor Week, the seventeenth such week, it is a fitting time to provide some insight into how both the forestry industry came into being and what compelled the systematic afforestation of, at least parts of, our landscape.

Being classified a semiarid country, South Africa is not a naturally forested region. In fact, the land predominantly comprises grassland or herbaceous species ecosystems with natural closed-canopy forests existing only in sheltered, well- watered pockets of the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

Reports by various European maritime explorers from as early as the mid-sixteenth century describe the Southern African coastline as being largely barren of extensive forests. So, when the Dutch established their colonial outpost on the shores of Table Bay in April 1652, the objective of which was to supply all the freshwater, vegetable, fruit and meat requirements of the Dutch East Indian Company’s (DEIC’s) passing trading fleet, they were aware that they were inhabiting an area of limited woodland. Thus, correctly assuming that the Cape Peninsula would be unable to cater for all the European wood requirements for both construction and fuel purposes, especially in the long term, the first settlers brought with them, in addition to all the necessary fruit and vegetable cuttings, seeds of the alder tree (Aldus glutinosa) as well as a cargo of Norwegian and Swedish planks and beams. Within a few years, the settlers had also planted a number of other alien tree species including Norway spruce (Picea abies), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), ash (Franxinus excelsior) and oak (Quercus robur). Thus were the roots of an alien tree invasion that has proved so aggressive that, today, over 100 000 km2 of South Africa’s land is covered by more than 750 alien tree species. (An interesting aside to note is that the oldest still-thriving cultivated tree in South Africa is a Pyrus communis, or Saffraan Pear, which was planted in the Company Gardens, in what is now the centre of Cape Town, in mid-1652.)

However, given that it would be some years before those seeds grew into suitable timber and that the community had an immediate demand for wood – for building, furniture, wagons and ship repair purposes and also to fuel the kitchens, bakery and lime kilns – the Dutch settlers were compelled to fell almost the entire indigenous forest shrubbery they found growing on the slopes of Table Mountain.

Consequently, Jan van Riebeeck, the first colonial commander of the Cape, was soon compelled to send out exploration parties to find, besides other things, suitable timber and firewood. It must have been with joyful hearts that they discovered the forested enclave, subsequently dubbed t’Houtbaaijten (today Hout Bay), which was said to be “full of large, tall, straight, heavy, medium and small tress, suitable for the largest construction one could desire”. In time, this forest was also heavily exploited and, by 1679 – less than three decades after the arrival of the colonists – practically all the indigenous forestry in the accessible vicinity of the settlement had been depleted. This was despite a series of decrees, or Placaats, forbidding settlers from felling trees in the indigenous forests.

To stem the wave of deforestation and prevent timber shortages, DEIC officials encouraged all new grantees of land to plant trees, particularly oaks, which proved the most successful of all the imported trees, on their properties. This initiative was particularly enforced under the governerships of Simon van der Stel and his son William Adriaan van der Stel to the extent that, by 1684, it was claimed 28 987 oaks, 459 alders and 81 ash trees had been successfully planted. It is for this reason that much of the Cape Winelands, particularly the picturesque towns of Stellenbosch and Paarl, are mostly lined with very old oak trees.

However, that initiative proved inadequate to meet the wood requirements of the continuously expanding colony, so the settlers were compelled to venture further and further into the hinterland to find sources of timber. By 1726, the settlers had reached as far as, and were exploiting the indigenous forests around, what is today Grootvaderbosch, Riviersonderend and Swellendam. Just 50 years later, they had extended as far as Knysna and had begun ravaging the magnificent ancient indigenous forest above the bay. Such gluttonous deforestation continued, largely unchecked, for the next century and it was only in 1883 that indigenous forests were placed under sound scientific management with the introduction of the first legislation regulating the systematic management of woodlands. (One only has to read a few Dalene Matthee novels to get a sense of the wanton destruction of the Knysna forest during the nineteenth century.)

Meanwhile, following the change in colonial administration at the turn of the nineteenth century and the influx of substantially more (British) colonists, demand for wood products skyrocketed. Such was the almost insatiable demand that, by 1810, it had become necessary to import large consignments of pine boards and beams from as far afield as the US. As this proved an enormously expensive undertaking and would be an unsustainable solution in the long term, in 1825, the first commercial plantation of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) at Genandendal was established just north of Caledon.

Over the next 200 years, the cultivation and exploitation of managed plantations flourished to the extent that, today, South Africa has the highest percentage of proportional area of certified plantations – about 1.27-million hectares of the total land area – in the world.