Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo (JCPZ) has committed to providing leadership and more engagement with community members regarding the containment of the shot-hole-borer beetle following a heated public meeting hosted at the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens on 11 March.

City Parks hosted the meeting to educate various stakeholders about the beetle and how they were dealing with its containment.

General manager for ecosystems and open space management at City Parks, Senzo Nyembe described the beetle as a ‘tiny terror’ which has baffled scientists. The beetle called the polyphagous shot-hole-borer was identified by City Parks in 2018 as a pest which has infested and killed a number of street trees, threatening the Johannesburg urban forest.

City Parks said they have analysed 1 447 street trees thus far, most of which are in the Craighall Park, Illovo, Rosebank and surrounding areas. They said of those trees, 468 were infested with shot-hole-borer.

The utility has taken the decision only to remove dead trees and not all the reproductive host trees, as some residents have suggested. A number of contributing factors have compounded to bring about this decision including the impact of deforestation, lack of funding and lack of dedicated dumping sites among others.

When the floor was opened for questions, a number of residents associations, residents and members of the Borer Action Group flooded City Parks with questions, stating their disapproval of the alleged slow action by the City to deal with the infestation.

Julian Ortlepp of the Borer Action Group said he was frustrated by the utility’s statements which indicated that they had been actively engaging with him, but they had apparently not engaged with him since April last year.

“The reality is that trees are dying across the city and we need practical solutions,” he said. “Keeping the reproductive hosts will only assist in making the borer prosper… We are tired of hearing about what you [JCPZ] can’t do. “We are not convinced you understand the severity of the problem. The people on the ground are ignored by JCPZ and we have lost confidence in you.”

Hilton Fryer, who runs a website about the beetle, emphasised the urgency of removing dead trees, while chairperson of the Parktown North Residents Association, Lee-Ann Louverdis expressed her frustration over City Parks’ alleged lack of leadership and guidance to community members on how to deal with infected trees on their private properties. She also disapproved of the fact that a dump site had not yet been created for disposing of infected wood.

City Parks responded to questions stating that trees on private property (which make up roughly 90 per cent of trees across the city) are not their responsibility and said Pikitup had been tasked with providing a dump site for infested wood.

The utility did, however, commit to hosting meetings every two months with the public, providing regular updates of their websites regarding the shot-hole-borer and more engagement with the community to compile data.

MMC Nonhlanhla Sifumba said, “We want to work together with stakeholders and not against them. Our [initial] approach was somewhat slow as we erred on the side of caution but we commit to providing leadership going forward. We hope that this will be the start of more engagement to fight this beetle.”

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