Aging exotic trees in Zimbabwe prove dangerous to lives and properties

By Jeffrey Moyo

HARARE, Zimbabwe- (AA) – Two years ago, 31-year-old Belinda Chari residing in central Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, lost her four-year-old child after a giant jacaranda tree fell on him following heavy rains in the city. Another such exotic tree fell on her car, damaging it extensively.

As the world commemorates World Environment Day and Week from June 5-11, people like Chari are falling victims to the aging and unattended exotic trees in the Zimbabwean capital.

Zimbabwe’s exotic trees like the jacarandas across towns and cities, which were planted to give green cover to urban areas, are now fast aging and dying away, with little care paid to their growing extinction, according to Zimbabwe’s environmental activists Martin Kavhura.

“People just don’t care about these exotic trees as they vanish, the same way people rarely care about the indigenous trees themselves,” Kavhura told Anadolu Agency.

“These exotic trees that lay where there were previously no trees, hold the soils together and the same trees have been bringing the rain through transpiration, which means by this the jacaranda trees have been leaving the extra water on their leaves evaporating into the air, adding to the moisture of the air, which subsequently gets saturated thereby bringing the rains,” he said.

Around 1900, the British South Africa Company which was in charge of this southern African country of Zimbabwe initiated a plan to hire hungry and jobless white settlers to plant tens of thousands of exotic trees like jacarandas in towns and cities.

Experts believe that these trees now a century old with shallow roots are causing extensive damage to vehicles and pedestrians. They are periodically falling at the slightest provocation. Many residents like Chari have already paid the price of losing family and his car, which were crushed under the aging tree.

Henry Machokoto, a Harare-based urban planner, said the end of exotic trees may leave huge strips of urban land spaces exposed to degradation.

According to the UN Development Program, Zimbabwe hosts some of the most important biodiversity hotspots in the world and is home to over 5,930 species of plants such as the jacarandas, which are dying away due to aging.

But not all exotic trees are dying by themselves. Some are being axed by wood poachers, according to 36-year-old Langton Bhamu, a resident of Harare.

“More often than not, many people tend to suffer without electricity, and with gas prices also rising, I have personally plucked off branches from jacaranda trees and used these as firewood,” he said.

Even as jacarandas currently cover around 45% of Zimbabwe’s total land area, there is no plan to replenish and replace the aging plants.

“Exotic trees are aging and nobody is replacing them as they vanish,” said another Harare resident, 31-year-old Peter Muwoneki.