Zimbabwe Fights Back Against Invasive Species
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 09.17.07
Photo credit: ferdinandareus
Zimbabwe is mad as hell, and it's not going to take it anymore. From exotic plants, in any case. Andrew Langa, Zimbabwe's environmental and tourism deputy minister is calling for a full-scale attack on invasive species that are threatening the nation's vegetation and biodiversity, which are crucial to mitigating the effects of climate change.
"Zimbabwe is under attack from a variety of this type of species and I would like to call upon environmental stakeholders, the media included, to focus on awareness raising as well as eradication of these species in order to save biodiversity," he said in a press conference on Thursday.
Langa noted that Victoria Falls, one of the nation's most popular tourist destinations, has been annexed by more than three varieties of invasive plants, including Lantana camara, an exotic shrub, poisonous to cattle, that is spread by its leaves, seeds, stem, and root.
"Birds and wind also accelerate the rate at which it spreads," said Barnabas Mawire, an official from Environment Africa. The most effective way to nip its spreading in the bud, so to speak, is to uproot the plant and burn it.
A Clean Up Zimbabwe campaign was held at Victoria Falls on Saturday to raise awareness of the species—which entered the country as a flower and later invaded the ecosystem—as well as to educate locals on how to identify and squash out invasive species. ::allAfrica.com
Like they are really going to have the luxury of worrying about invasive species when a giant portion of their population is starving to death due to the brutal dictatorship of Mugabe.
There is no way that a broken, corrupt, bankrupt country is going to actually implement this plan, in spite of what they claim.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/09/14/pets.zimbabwe.ap/index.html
Next Mugabe will claim his political opposition are invasive species to be eradicated.
I agree with the comment above.
Besides, Treehugger, what an inane and totally useless post. How about the invasive species called "ignorant people"? How about shedding some light how we may rid that beautiful country of its violent and inhumane government. Why would you even quote these guys? So its OK for governments to raise international environmental awareness while they kill their own people? The "Clean Up Zimbabwe" campaign should start with cleaning up their present government, not some poor little Lantana Camara shrub!
Posting this without any context about the utter disaster wreaked upon Zimbabwe by the corrupt dictatorship of Robert Mugabe is naive at best. No ecological disaster there has any chance of being fixed without first fixing the political and humanitarian disaster currently visited on that state. This is an extremely disappointing post by Treehugger.
We have a problem with Lantana in Australia as well. It is incredibly invasive. Please don't bag some people who are trying to do something good just because there are some idiots in government. The US is a good case in point.
Note that the same people who are trying to do something good are also the idiots in the government.
It's true that this is probably just a PR move by Zimbabwe's government to get some positive ink (which appears to have been successful), but to blast Treehugger for this post seems a little harsh.
After all, Treehugger is an ENVIRONMENTAL blog, and this is ENVIRONMENTAL news. To have not reported it, Treehugger wouldn't have been doing its job.