RESCUE PLAN: Stranded giants on the move — rescued baobabs hit 900km road to sanctuary

“Operation Baobab” hit the road late on 11 November when the first of five iconic African baobab trees were loaded on to “abnormal truck” rigs that will convey them more than 900km by road to Mpumalanga as part of an urgent rescue plan initiated by South African baobab champion Dr Sarah Venter.

Venter, an ecologist and founder of the Baobab Foundation, has been instrumental in helping to raise the necessary funding to shift the giant trees to a suitable sanctuary after they lay abandoned on their sides for more than three months in an open parking lot at a shipping warehouse in Durban’s Mobeni industrial zone.

The trees were “intercepted” by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment in late July, just before their scheduled export to the Black Sea nation of Georgia, apparently destined to decorate properties owned by billionaire former Georgian prime minister, Bidzina Ivanishvili.

According to the department, the exporter was not able to produce valid permits or licences for their removal, transport or export – leading to their extended, three-month-long sojourn in the parking lot of a Durban shipping warehouse.

Venter stepped in last week after reading about the plight of the stranded trees in Daily Maverick and also learning about the apparent difficulties of securing funding for their relocation to a suitable recovery site.

“I am just really relieved that Timbavati have stepped up by offering to pay for the costs of loading, transport and replanting,” she said.

“If they had died in Durban, or been exported to Georgia, I think this would have sent the wrong message to the world about South African conservation – as this rescue operation is much bigger than just these five individual trees.

“We also did not want to see a repeat of what happened in Kenya (where eight baobabs uprooted from the East African coast died soon after their arrival in Georgia after remaining in Kenya for an extended period during a similar legal row over their export)”.

“When I realised that they were likely to keep lying around in Durban for some time, I knew that we had to get moving fast.”

Initially, there were plans to move them to the KwaZulu-Natal National Botanical Gardens in Pietermaritzburg, but Venter (worried about the probable delays in government procurement and tender processes) contacted Mark Read at the Everard Read Group of Galleries in Johannesburg to see if he could help to secure private funding for a rescue operation.

“Within 10 minutes Mark phoned back to say he had found someone who was prepared to pay for the costs of moving them to Timbavati.

“Despite the long delays in Durban, the trees are looking really good – but the really critical thing is to get them back into the soil as soon as possible to allow them to recover and regenerate, because they are using up stored stem water to survive,” she said, noting that the weight of healthy baobabs comprised up to 75% water.

“Some have become thinner and will need the summer season to recover. But I think we got here just in time and I’m quite positive about their future. All of them have sprouted leaves and flower buds, which is the normal time of year for this to happen.”

One of the trees showed signs of internal rot, and Venter spent much of Tuesday removing clumps of dry, desiccated tissue from its base, as well as spraying other damaged sections of the trees with a lime sulphur spray, which acts as an antifungal and antibacterial agent.

Venter explained that baobabs have self-healing properties to repair damage from internal rot that can develop naturally, or from elephants feeding on their bark by gouging the trees with their tusks.

“Luckily, baobabs are very resilient and will heal quite quickly,” she said.

Venter also notes that while public attention was focused on the illegal export of baobabs and smaller succulent plants from the Western and Northern Cape, other hardwood species such as kiatt (from Angola, Zimbabwe and Mozambique) were also being smuggled out through South Africa, along with other vulnerable species such as red ivory.

“It’s a really horrible trade, so I hope that the current public attention on these baobabs can also help to highlight what is also going on with other protected or vulnerable tree species.”

“We need to get the message out that such valuable trees are not for sale – and certainly not for theft.”

While baobabs are not classified as an endangered species, they are a specially protected species. The larger mature trees play an important ecological role as nesting sites for threatened birds, as well as providing food and shelter for other species.

Timbavati reserve ecologist Almero Bosch said staff had already laid out a suitable rehabilitation and rescue site for the five baobabs, which are expected to arrive later this week or early next week. (Because the trees are being transported under special traffic department escort as abnormal loads, the trucks cannot travel at night or over weekends).

Bosch said the relocation site had been fenced off to protect the recovering plants from the attention of hungry elephants. They would also be secured with cables to guard against them toppling over while their root systems recover. Supplementary water supplies would also be available to assist the recovery process.

Bosch said he was pleased to hear that the trees had recently sprouted new leaves despite their ordeal.

“The site also has nice gravelly soils very similar to where they came from in Limpopo,” he said, noting that the about 55,000ha reserve straddles both Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces.

Divine Landscapes, the Pretoria-based company that was responsible for the removal and attempted export to Georgia, has stated via its attorneys that the baobabs were not poached from the wild, but rather “obtained from private gardens with the full consent of the respective owners”.

However, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment refused to issue the company with a permit retrospectively. Divine Landscapes appealed against the decision unsuccessfully and is due to appear in the Durban Magistrates’ Court in January to face criminal charges under the National Forestry Act.

In response to queries from Daily Maverick about the progress of the baobab rescue, the department issued a brief response late on 11 November stating that, “The Department is actively undertaking urgent interventions to rescue and relocate the five protected baobab trees situated at the AGL warehouse in Durban.” DM