The Nature Diary: The reuse of invasive alien plants and their benefits for communities

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702, weekend breakfast, The Nature Diary, with Timnery.

It's 23 minutes before 7 o'clock. Welcome back to 7 o'clock.

The weekend breakfast with Rick Lungau.

It is a Sunday, which means it's time for us to talk nature.

And this week we are looking at a first of its kind,

community center that's been constructed out of invasive alien plant material.

In a moment you'll be joined by CEO and Senior Consultant

at Puchy Sainy Nonprofit Company, David Mason,

joined now in studio, as always,

by a residency as I need your conservationist, Timnery, Tim, good morning.

Good morning, are we bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?

I think so, yes.

Okay, all right, it was a bit of hesitation.

I just had to just do a quick wellness check.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How are you?

I am. What did I say that all fashion thing,

testicles, spectacles, wallet and watch, yes, I'm ready to go.

I am all the bids.

Yeah, yeah, I got all the bids and they're all the right places.

There's a song about that, all the bids and all the right places.

Really?

Yes.

It was fine, it.

Yeah, I can't remember exactly how it works.

Yeah.

Yeah, but it's all the bids and all the right places.

Oh, that's good.

Yeah.

I have some news for you.

What's that?

It relates to sharks in the Bahamas.

Yes.

So apparently sharks have been found interesting cocaine

and painkillers and caffeine

in some popular tourist hotspots in the Bahamas.

Well, they're eating tourists.

No, which is the problem.

So there's a study that was done.

It was published in Environmental Pollution.

It's the first time cocaine

and de-clofenak were found in Bahamas.

De-clofenak.

De-clofenak.

Yeah.

That sounds like a painkiller.

De-clofenak is Valtorin.

Yes.

So you can't give De-clofenak

to cattle, etc or horses

that are going to be used

in what they call vulture restaurants

because it kills the vultures.

Oh.

It's a whole study done.

It took a lot of vultures in India in vast areas.

Oh, it's yeah.

Yeah.

So out of 85 sharks captured for the research,

28, including the Caribbean reef,

the Atlantic nurse, the lemon sharks,

they all showed detectable levels of the substances

or the caffeine, the cocaine,

the Valtorin, all of that.

They're also seeing altered metabolic markers in the sharks.

We don't know yet what that means.

We haven't observed like what happens

when a shark is on cocaine.

We're not sure.

I'm just thinking of a crackhead shark.

I mean, they get dead rep as it is.

Now we got drug addict sharks.

Do you get shark dealers?

And are they now writing?

Maybe they're writing.

They've got those those submarine things

that trot across all, across the planet

where they try and get,

they move drugs in these sort of like semi-submergeable vessels.

Right.

And you think maybe the sharks are running those?

Maybe the sharks are getting, are robbing those.

And then they just do your thing.

Do you get hijacked?

Oh, sure.

And they have had those bags of cocaine

and all which they throw overboard

because they know where the current is

and then they wash it short

or be picked up, etc.

They're quite sophisticated.

They've even got tracking devices

so they can be found.

Wow.

Yeah, no.

So now the sharks have rumbled onto this lot.

Can you think, please, guys,

is somebody a cartoon artist

because I can just visualize a crackhead shark

with another one with, with limping past

with these fun, you know, whatever,

taking Voltaren so that he can get these,

no, this has got to be ridiculous.

But jokes aside, I mean, you think of it.

Think of all the water.

I mean, in places like London,

the water carries vast quantities of estrogen

and all sorts of things.

I'm just trying to remember

which there's one in particular of the drugs

for anxiety, etc.

It's detectable in the water.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, I said to somebody

other day we were talking about, you know,

eating healthily, etc.

They said, yes, no, they'll have a slide.

They'd love a piece of salmon

with a side slice of mercury.

Oh, I mean, you know,

we've really made a muck of the planet, haven't we?

We really, and we've been here so briefly.

Yes.

Dinosaurs roam to the surface for millions of years.

And that's what they say, you know,

save the whales, save the snails,

etc, etc.

Do the whole thing.

Who's caused that, guys,

there's just back up a little bit, yeah?

Yeah.

Whales and snails, and also it's been here

at one hell of a lot longer than we have.

They really have.

Yeah, yeah, no, we've made an entrance.

Yeah, I mean, we've made it.

And I also always say, you know, what happened?

Everybody says, you know, you want to leave South Africa.

Could you tell me then why Mrs. Pleasant

company packed up and left?

I mean, was there a problem back then?

Right.

Yeah, come on, this is like universe.

Or that potholes back then.

Yeah, it was the potholes.

It was the potholes and BC's wheel.

Right, back to the more serious things.

And some good news, actually.

When you think of invasive alien species

or invasive alien plants,

we kind of are a bit despondent.

You kind of think, well,

I don't know what to do there.

I mean, if you think of how to be a sport,

is it the hyacinth that's kind of taken over?

Yeah, the hyacinth that I keep putting a couple of bags on

and the fish eat the bags and the bugs eat the fish.

Yeah, nothing happens.

And the hyacinth is like, hi, I'm still here.

Yeah, yeah.

So there is a sense of despondency,

I think when we talk about invasive alien plants,

but this is so cool that there's an organization

that's found a really good way to use them.

I like this because, look, I mean,

you're going to be very careful

about how you talk about invasive alien plants.

Okay, Mili's, as an example,

those vast Mili fields in the free state,

those are invasive alien Mili's.

But the only difference is that there would be,

they would continue if the corn would fall on the ground

and they would sprout and go again.

A lot of it is escapees in a lot of it is all tended areas

that have been allowed to degenerate.

But I'm just keen on how do they come about this?

What is this program around?

And I had a chat to David before the program

I chat to him, I think it was on Friday.

And found out how they've changed.

This wasn't their focus,

and this is an accidental and exciting focus.

So joining us now, via Zoom, is David Mason.

David is CEO and Senior Consultant

at the Pochley Sunday Nonprofit Company.

David, a very good morning to you.

Welcome to Weekend Breakfast.

Morning, Googs, morning, Tim.

Thanks very much.

Thank you very much for giving us a part

of your Sunday morning.

So talk to us about the work that's being done

with these invasive alien species.

Which ones are we speaking about in particular?

Yeah, thanks.

So this is taking place at Elon's Club,

which is a community owned piece of land

up the West Coast in Newestland Cape in the Cedarburg.

The plants that they have on that land are pines

but mainly black water.

So that's been the main species

that's been used in this particular project now.

David, I think you back up a little bit though,

this whole thing around utilizing alien plants

and all this wasn't where you guys started

and you started many, many years ago

working with these communities.

Yeah, so Pochley Sonny's focus really has been

on land reform and land administration.

So really trying to work with communities

that have received land through the land reform program

in many of those communities

and across the country there are 4,000 of these,

let's call them communal property institution.

So legal entities that are set up to hold the land

that people get through the land reform program.

We've been working with some of these

to try and assist them to make the land that they've received

work for them.

Because in most situations when they get land

basically there's no support to them at all

in terms of trying to set up their legal entity

like their systems of actually holding the land.

If you can imagine your big large extended family

trying to make decisions around what land to use for what

it'll be a benefit.

Here you have 150 people in some situations,

10,000 people.

So our work really has been around trying to assist

such communities to set up those legal entities,

to set up a company if they need a company

for commercial activities.

Secondly, really around the land administration.

So who should be getting what kind of land

for what in what kind of arrangements,

what are their obligations,

what are their responsibilities and so forth.

And then really looking at the development of land.

So what are we going to do on our land?

How do we get the agricultural working

if it's agricultural land, et cetera.

And then with the legal entity trying to work out

those governance and management systems.

So that's been our focus, really.

But Putsley Stein started working with WWE

if a few years ago around water issues

and I don't know whether your listeners know

there are areas in South Africa called

strategic water source areas,

which provide the bulk of the water we use,

but they're very tiny portion, 10% of the land,

providing 50% of the water.

So we started working with WWE if around water

and their interest and involvement in Elon's curve

where we were working.

They started looking at this and saying,

she isn't the place that we could do a whole number

of environmental conservation focused initiatives.

So they WWE has had links with a very interesting

and really with the innovation in this project comes from.

Been having links, has links with noncrete.

Noncrete because it essentially looks

and feels like concrete, but there's no,

it's not concrete, it's noncrete.

So they drew noncrete into this project

to say, can we not in this situation where Elon's curve,

even though they received their land in 1996,

they still live in informal houses.

Can we not use this as a place

where on the one hand we give the opportunity

to the Elon's clover to get a community center

or a crash that's probably going to be.

And at the same time show people a building method

which actually cuts down the use of concrete,

the use of steel, et cetera.

So noncrete became involved then in this project

and it started with there's a whole sort of process

that we've gone through in doing this

which I can maybe go into a little bit just now.

So that's how we've shifted and at Elon's curve

that kind of shift has gone further

because we've now with WWFs support and leadership

really are moving to the situation

where a portion of that Elon's curve land

which is really pristine Cedarburg land

is going to be put under conservation.

The community has decided at the AGM at the end of last year

to proceed and put some of their land

under nature conservation somehow.

We haven't decided at what level yet.

So that's been the shift at the Elon's curve.

Now you're surrounded by all these aliens.

What sort of process do you go through to decide hang on?

We can actually use the stuff as building material

because most people look at the alien vegetation

they cut it down, they put it in a big pile

and they drop a match in into that problem.

Yeah.

We have a huge problem in South Africa

and that is we have many, many thousands of hectares

of alien vegetation which grow very, very fast.

So we've got to understand,

we've got to work out a way of almost creating a market

for the use of alien vegetation

otherwise we're not going to be able to afford to get rid of it.

So we have to use our money in ways

which clears alien vegetation

but also achieves other objectives in the state, for example.

So what happens in this process?

Well, what happened in our particular process

at Elon's curve, that non-crete really drove,

was they set up a small factory in Cape Town

where they did a whole lot of testing

because remember this has been a very,

it's been a research and development process

as well as actually changing situation at Elon's curve.

So they, basically the alien, the bricks that they make

I'm not part of non-crete but the bricks that they make

are essentially chipped alien vegetation.

They chipped it to one sort of size

and then they chipped it again

depending on what they're going to be using it for

whether it breaks or making a floor to different size

and they mix it with their particular mutie

that they have developed and at the factory in Cape Town

to refine this and refine this

and then got it through testing.

So they tested it in terms of both load and in terms of fire.

So they put it into a furnace for three hours

at 1,200 degrees centigrade

and there was very little destruction of the bricks.

So can you imagine doing that in areas,

let's call them shack neighborhoods

when you get a shack fire going through

it spreads like hell.

If you could, if we could be making such houses

out of this non-crete material,

we wouldn't have those shack fires.

So it was very interesting and extremely exciting

to go to those tests to see how both under load

and under fire, this material was really coming up tops.

And so, I was going to say, and so when you make the bricks,

is it just purely this kind of the water biomass

or is there a combination of other things in there,

like are there stones in there?

Because as you're describing it,

it's quite resilient, like fire resistance,

it can handle load.

And someone might think, well, is it mixed

with some of the more traditional kinds of material for building?

So there is a bit of cement in it.

There's no sand in it.

And with the bricks, the chipping is less fine.

So you can see on a brick,

you can see the chipped alien village there.

So it's just chipped and this alien

and this mix that they've developed with a bit of cement.

So that's what it is.

Yeah, it's been very interesting for ourselves.

We haven't been involved in this.

To see this brick and how it's developed

and being refined with this R&D process, but that one, sir.

No, a project like this,

can this be replicated in other areas

and does it have to be produced in the factory,

dragged all of the alien vegetation,

dragged to town, produced and dragged back again?

What is the something that you can actually do on site?

Well, at Elon's Club,

16,000 bricks were made.

And from the alien vegetation area,

which is in the most of the alien vegetation

at Elon's Club occurs in the river bed.

From the old church,

which was empty at the time,

to be the place where the bricks were made.

From where they cleared the aliens,

to the actual Christ was 500 meters.

So in terms of your carbon footprint on travel,

on transport, it's absolutely zero.

So you've got to be able to,

you know, the best thing is in situations

like at Citrus Do, which is the town very near.

They have a quite a large informal settlement

in Citrus Do, right next to the river,

which is full of alien vegetation.

So it's an ideal situation where, on site,

you can actually produce the bricks.

It can be used right there next to it.

So, you know, it's in situations

where there is a lot of alien vegetation,

there is like very limited transport needed.

You know, lots of,

and you don't have to bring in a whole lot of steel.

Part of the Christ, if I can just say,

part of the Christ,

is that noncrete designed

with the assistance of a university in Switzerland,

designed a floor roof structure,

which is in the form of an arch.

I mean, if you think of all the very old buildings

in Europe that use an arch design,

they design this, and the only steel that is in it

is six sort of steel cables,

which hold the bulk of the roof together,

if you see what I'm saying.

So, with their roof design,

they also really have cut out the use of steel

or cut down the use of steel.

So, you got a situation here where sand,

which is a huge, just problematic product in the world,

in most highest, I think we use a huge,

I can't remember what the statistics are,

huge amount of sand.

That's been cut out yet,

and still being the two main things

that have cut out in this building process.

That sounds really, really fascinating.

And David, I'm just thank you so much

for also giving us your time this morning

and telling us about this fantastic work.

Great, that's fine, thanks very much.

I'm hoping that this will take on and be away

in which we can get rid of the alien vegetation

while at the same time dealing

with our housing crisis in South Africa.

Thank you, David.

That's David Mason.

He's CEO and Senior Consultant

at Pulchysigny Nonprofit Company.

Join us always by residency

and signage conservationist Tim Neary.

Thank you, Goose.

Thank you, Tim.

Yeah, I just like the fact that you can,

it's a different angle on what to do with alien vegetation.

You know, rather than just dropping a match into it.

Yeah.

Which is easy.

Which is easier.