Michelle Cocks and Tony Dold 87CONCLUSION
The study has revealed that large quantities of wild plant material are being
harvested from Pirie State Forest—as much as 1,592 kg of bark annually. The
sale of C. flanaganii contributes substantially to medicinal plant traders’ annual
income as 14% of their total earnings are derived from this species. The high
economic value of C. flanaganii, as much as US$46.80 per kilogram, in
neighbouring cities has resulted in it being an extremely valuable product,
but the current harvesting levels are not sustainable in the long term.
Without appropriate steps being taken to increase user groups’ ownership
and responsibility of the resource the likelihood of sustainability is extremely
low. Despite the Department of Forestry’s policy to increase access to resources
and the implementation of joint management programs in the area, no effective
structures are in place as yet. It is therefore strongly recommended that
cultivation programs and alternative harvesting methods be initiated at the
grassroots level to ensure that the species is not harvested to extinction.
Preliminary work on other rare species in South Africa has shown that active
ingredients can be found in parts other than the bark—such as the leaves—and
that these alternatives to the highly destructive harvesting of bark should be
explored (M. Mander personal communication).
The advantages of cultivation are not only confined to the individual taxa
but also to the maintenance of ecological integrity. For example, the continual
felling of Prunus africana (Hook.f.) Kalkm. (Nkefor et al. 1999) and Pausinystalia
johimbe (K. Schum.) Pierre ex Bielle (Sunderland et al. 1999) in Cameroon to
exploit the maximum bark yield causes large and discontinuous gaps in the
forest, affecting dynamic processes. In both cases successful domestication
and cultivation of the species are being undertaken by means of a well-
documented process (Nkefor et al. 1999; Sunderland et al. 1999) that could
be applied in South Africa. Furthermore, income generated from the sale of
C. flanaganii bark from sustainable sources would help alleviate the abject
poverty of the communities of Pirie Mission and Cwengcwe who would be
guaranteed an income from already well-established markets. The gatherers,
predominantly women, are also traditionally subsistence farmers and have
both farming skills and ecological knowledge of the forest as well as of the
species itself, which would be essential to the successful domestication of
C. flanaganii.
It is clear that, in accordance with the proposed implementation of a
participatory forest management programme by the Department of Water
Affairs and Forestry, the communities of Pirie Mission and Cwengcwe would
benefit from a collaborative, interdisciplinary effort to make optimum use of
a forest product and ensure its sustainability through domestication. The
benefits would be participatory and therefore afford truly sustainable
management as well as economic empowerment to local communities.05cassipourea.p65 87 22/12/2004, 11:04