With arbour week coming up, this is the perfect time to share the fourth and final instalment on the temporary insect exhibition, which went up at the Durban Natural Science Museum back during the COVID pandemic.
The message is (spoiler alert): It’s all about plants!
This last article will cover the last major role of insects: being food for others. Then we ask: if insects are so important for the survival of nature as a whole, what do insects need to survive? How important are insects in nature, as a sum total of all the roles they play? And what is our role in all of this?
Today (22 May) is International Day for Biological Diversity. This year’s theme invites us to “Be part of the Plan”. The Biodiversity Plan was an agreement reached by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in 2022, signed by 196 countries, with a vision of a world of living in harmony with nature. It has 4 long-term goals, and 23 action-oriented targets, “to halt and reverse biodiversity loss to put nature on a path to recovery“.
We happen to live in the middle of the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany biodiveristy hotspot. eThekwini municipality is a patchwork of amazing nature, interspersed with urban built-up and industrial and densely populated and even semi-rural areas – the annual municipal state of biodiversity reports, especially the full report from 2007, give a good overview. Our neighbourhood is exceptionally green and lush, located in the scarp forest on the boundary between the coastal belt and the endangered Sandstone Sourveld.
So what can I do to protect and restore the bit of nature that is my responsibility? In other words, my own back yard?
Here is a short to-do list:
Get to know the species that live in your back yard
Appreciate biodiversity instead of landscaping, garden for nature
Find out what doesn’t belong (aka invasive aliens), and get rid of them
Invite nature back, by planting more diverse, locally indigenous plants
Protect and restore the soil (make and use compost, cover bare soil with mulch and leaf litter)
Share indigenous seeds and cuttings, knowledge and passion with your neighbours
Our patch of swamp forest.
Our garden contains an extra-special little patch of swamp forest. Frankly, it’s why we bought this property rather than another. Of course I wanted to protect this lovely piece of nature, but at first I had no idea which trees belong here, and which don’t. So I signed up for a tree identification course with Geoff Nichols, a local tree guru, and took along branches from every tree in the garden. Geoff and other tree-lovers had great fun identifying them for me.
It turns out we have 15 different indigenous tree species growing here, and since then I have planted a few more. We removed a fan palm (its seeds are still coming up), an some inkberry trees. The indigenous trees and plants attract a beautiful variety of insects, which in turn attract a riot of different birds.
A large proportion of the photos in my insect book were taken right here in my own garden.
Our bird list must be nearing 100 – without really trying very hard.
Keeping on top of the invasive aliens however is a constant war. Why are these alien plants such a problem? I have presented many times on this topic, and my blog to celebrate World Environment Day 2020 during COVID lock-down has a video on this topic. Below are some of the invasive aliens that we constantly have to fight back:
CannaClimbing cassiaFan palm & Elephant earGinger & Inch plant & Arrow-head vineGingerInkberry treeSingapore daisyAmerican chickweed with sticky seedsErect sword fern
This week, to commemorate Biodiversity Day, I will once again do battle in my own garden, removing invasive aliens that have come up since my last attack. Wish me luck! I also plan to reach out to my neighbours, and start a conversation about controlling invasive plants.
And then I plan to go around the neighbourhood, targeting the horrible catclaw creeper (see gallery below). Macfadyena unguis-cati is a particularly pernicious category 1b invasive species, very difficult to eradicate. Catclaw seeds blow in on the wind. Young seedlings immediately grow this fat little root, deep in the soil, which easily breaks off when you try to pull the plant out. Ignore them, and they grow melon-sized tubers. Thick rope-like vines snake up trees, along branches, and if you don’t cut and poison them, they soon cover and smother the tree crown. They were imported for their beautiful yellow flowers. Now we sit with the mess.
The ‘cat claws’Young seedlingsEnormous tubersCreeping up our fenceCreeping up a tree trunkCreeping along the branches of an indigenous coral treeLeavesThick vinesFlowers
EASTER Action was registered on 21 November 2019, almost exactly – as it turns out – when the first case of COVID-19 was detected in China. It was in the middle of the South African coronavirus lock-down when we heard that our tax exempt and 18A status had been approved. So this organization was born smack bang into the middle of a global health, social and economic crisis.
We decided that the first thing EASTER Action needed to do, was respond to the COVID-19 crisis, by acting on its first objective, which includes the words ‘…while meeting human needs’.
Food donations
With donations from the directors intended for this very purpose, EASTER Action is simply providing food parcels to families who already lived in poverty, and who have absolutely no income at this time.
Information booklet
Responding to the need for good information, EASTER Action is releasing COVID19 Basics, an information booklet that answers some common questions about this disease.
We have also visited a local retirement home, to give our senior citizens important information on why and how to protect themselves and each other against the coronavirus.
We continue to advise and assist as the home tries to adapt to the current crisis, and prepare for the long haul.
EASTERaction 