No Respect For Trees

THE lack of respect for trees in Namibia is outrageous! Trees are the largest and oldest living beings on earth. As stated in the article in The Namibian on Friday, 13.11.2009, Combretum imberbe trees have in the past been carbon dated by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa and were found to be 1 050 years old.

If the perpetrators of this act of gross vandalism moved in with sophisticated machinery, surely there must have been many witnesses. Chainsaws are noisy and the logs are heavy, so many people must have become aware of the cutting and must have seen the logs being transported. Why did no one call the Police? Even now there must be people who could identify the persons who cut the trees, who could identify the vehicles used for transporting the wood etc. Are they being prosecuted?Why do the people who live in the vicinity of the river where the trees were cut not care for their heritage? Areas with large numbers of Combretum imberbe should be proclaimed as community forests in order for the people on the ground to benefit from any income generated by such trees – then they would be motivated to protect them from foreign thieves.Luise HoffmannVia e-mail