Painting the future: How an actuary is transforming Newlands Forest's fight against poaching

Daily Maverick

22-04-2025

Willem Boshoff fell in love with Newlands Forest in 2019. Back then, he assumed SANParks was felling trees for ecological reasons. But when he encountered stripped, ring-barked trees — sometimes completely dead — and spoke to rangers, he learned the truth: this was no management strategy. It was poaching.
A quiet war has been raging in Newlands Forest on the slopes of Cape Town's Devil's Peak. It's a battle against bark strippers – people who hack into the ancient trees of this precious indigenous woodland to sell their bark for traditional medicine, often leaving behind dead or dying giants of the forest.
This month saw a breakthrough. Following a tip-off, South African National Parks and Sea, Air and Mountain (Seam) rangers conducted a foot patrol along the Woodcutter's Trail where they heard chanting and chopping sounds — clear signs of illegal activity.
When they closed in, they found four individuals actively stripping bark: two hacking at the trunks, the others stuffing the loot into backpacks. The suspects fled, abandoning their tools. Thanks to a Seam (Sea, Air, and Mountain) K9 unit and swift ranger response, three of the four were apprehended. Confiscated items included a panga, an axe and four backpacks bulging with bark. The suspects were taken to Claremont SAPS and formally charged.
While this might seem like a small victory, it's part of a broader, community-driven effort that's been steadily gaining ground – led, somewhat improbably, by an actuary with a paintbrush.
Poaching
Willem Boshoff fell in love with Newlands Forest in 2019. Back then, he assumed SANParks was felling trees for ecological reasons. But when he encountered stripped, ring-barked trees — sometimes completely dead — and spoke to rangers, he learned the truth: this was no management strategy. It was poaching.
He was deeply affected.
'My poor wife had to deal with me walking around in the forest at 10 o'clock at night with a head torch and pepper spray trying to catch these guys,' he recalls.
With the pandemic came an explosion in bark stripping. Seeking solutions, Boshoff read about urban arborists who deter stripping by painting tree bark. He tested the idea in the forest using diluted grey PVA paint.
'People were stripping all around it but not the painted trees. We'd found a solution,' he says.
Support flowed in from public donors and groups like the Sugarbird Trust. With funding, Boshoff and a team began systematically painting trees — starting with mature specimens of Cape beech, assegai, and stinkwood, the species most targeted by poachers. Over six months, they painted more than 3,000 trees.
'The project has been an enormous success,' says Boshoff. 'Not a single tree we've painted has been stripped.'
Bark from certain indigenous trees is used in traditional medicine. While some of this use is rooted in cultural practice, much of the modern trade is purely commercial. Boshoff is careful not to demonise tradition.
'We're not critical of a practice that has been going on for centuries,' he explains, 'we are critical about it being done in a completely unsustainable manner.'
He notes that the bark from old trees — sometimes 150 years or older — is irreplaceable. 'If you shoot a mature rhino, in six years you've got a mature rhino again. If you ring-bark an old tree, that's a 150-year hole in the forest.'
Table Mountain National Park is unusually vulnerable.
Enforcement
There are no fences, and it borders a metropole of more than 4.5 million people. Bark stripping is low on the prosecution priority list, and enforcement is tricky in such dense terrain.
Yet public engagement is growing. Community groups like Friends of Table Mountain and Take Back Our Mountains are investing hundreds of thousands of rand in trail maintenance and security initiatives. The Sugarbird Trust has installed Snapscan-linked signs for forest donations — one recently yielded R50,000 from a single donor.
Even with these efforts, the forest needs guardians.
'As users we need to contribute to the park's upkeep,' says Boshoff. 'It's not just about individual trees. The whole ecosystem is a beautiful thing.'
The recent arrests show that coordinated enforcement still matters. But it's the blend of community involvement, creative deterrents, and quiet commitment — like Boshoff's brushstrokes — that seems to be turning the tide.
As for Boshoff, his hope is simple: 'I want future generations to be able to walk into Newlands Forest, look up at a 200-year-old tree, and marvel at its beauty. I think it's worth protecting.' DM