Who can forget the pictures of army tankers trucking in water to the drought stricken town of Sedgefield, near Knysna, last summer? This December, a replay was averted thanks partly to the creation of a desalination plant next to the beach. But scientists warn that unless urgent action is taken to rehabilitate mountain catchment areas, the Garden Route could face severe water rationing. Economic activity would shrivel.

The water shortage is primarily caused by an extremely dry period, but nobody is disputing that the prolonged mismanagement of the catchment areas is making things worse.

"The water crisis along the Garden Route would not be nearly as bad if the mountains were pristine," says Richard Cowling, professor of botany at Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth.

Just over a year ago, Cowling and a group of scientists surveyed the region from the air and were shocked by the extent of alien pine encroachment. "There are parts of it that look like the Rocky Mountains," he says. "Large areas of the mountain landscape have been transformed to closed-canopy pine forests. Indeed, there is hardly a hectare that is not invaded to some extent."

A serious water rationing

The problem with pines is that because they use up much more groundwater than fynbos, water yields from the catchment areas could drop by between 30 percent and 100 percent, depending on the annual rainfall. This could result in serious water rationing in Garden Route towns.

In a recent article in the Botanical Society's magazine, Veld & Flora, Cowling, CSIR chief ecologist Brian van Wilgen, SANParks vegetation ecologist Tineke Kraaij and ranger Jonathan Britton warn that residents face not merely the nuisance of not being able to water their gardens or wash cars, but systematic rationing, comparable to electricity load-shedding.

The Garden Route would also be unable to provide water for any new development. The implications for an area with a rapidly growing human population are alarming.

Moreover, pine-infested areas support fires of much greater intensity than fynbos. Apart from the threat to humans, such fires damage the soil, resulting in erosion and the silting up of dams.

Tourist numbers to dwindle

In the scientists' worst-case scenario, tourist numbers would dwindle, both because of the water shortage and because the unique and attractive fynbos that characterises the region's many hiking trails would disappear under pines.

Already the famed Outeniqua and Tsitsikamma trails traverse much terrain "made gloomy and dull by towering pines and their fire-blackened skeletons," the group laments. "The renowned Cape flora is everywhere in retreat."

Without effective management the situation will rapidly worsen. With each fire ? and fire is inevitable in fynbos landscapes ? pine cones open and release winged seeds which can travel for kilometres. Thus, pine populations get denser and spread further after each fire.

But how did the situation become so dire? Repeated departmental restructuring dating back to the PW Botha era (the mid-1980s) resulted in the Garden Route being divided up between various conservation and forestry agencies. But in the process, government left large tracts of fynbos in the Outeniqua and Tsitsikamma mountains without any custodian.

Page two: Big increases in water tariffs.

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