Mall's environmental efforts pay off as moved plants thrive

[caption id="attachment_38298" align="alignright" width="405"] SUCCESS STORY: Marcel Basson shows the rare but thriving ‘cyclopia pubescens’ at the Baywest Mall site[/caption]

ONE year after ground was broken on the R1.7-billion Baywest Mall in the western suburbs of Port Elizabeth, threatened indigenous plant species and a relocated natural rocky outcrop on the city site are thriving, thanks to careful environmental interventions.

Environmental control officer on site Marcel Basson, who was appointed to ensure rare and indigenous flora and fauna were not affected by the mall's development, said threatened plant species were now thriving.

This was thanks to the consistent monitoring of the indigenous species and the removal of alien vegetation, which had not occurred until developers moved onto the site.

Yet another success, Basson said, was the thriving cyclopia pubescens – an extremely rare plant found mostly in the Nelson Mandela Bay area – which had nearly been eradicated because no one had cared for the site previously. - Herald Reporter

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