Water Hyacinth can be a problem if not constantly managed, but as Cathy suggests, the manual labour is available, there are people that need jobs, and the plant has many useful purposes of which we can take advantage. According to the book 'Herbs, the visual guide to more than 700 herb species from around the world' published by Eyewitness Handbooks, the Water Hyacinth is:
an 'antipolluntant, floating, or mud-rooted aquatic plant...In Thailand, the leaf stalks are added to sour soups, the leaves are made into cigarette papers and garlands, and the fibers are mixed with cotton to produce thread. Wather Hyacinth can choke waterways, but it reduces algae by feeding on mineral salts and clears water of heavy metals if plants are later removed.'
We had water hyacinth in our small pond here at the house and harvested it once a week for duck food and our compost pile. We now have removed it completely and changed to a local form of a similar plant which we use for the same purposes, although the duck doesn't like to it eat like he did the water hyacinth.
Water hyacinth could be used similarly in Malawi with a maintanance program. The water often becomes clouded with algea from fertilizer runoff and the water hyacinth can help clean this up. Putting the plants as a mulch across the fields will return the nutrients to the soil, which adds organic matter, protects the soil from wind and sun, and takes care of the water hyacinth build up in the water ways. More ducks could also assist with the hyacinth maintanance and would be an additional source of protein through the meat and eggs if managed well.
By looking a little bit differently at the 'problem' we can create a solution that solves many problems!
Stacia
----- Original Message -----From: WeberSent: Friday, March 15, 2002 10:16 PMSubject: [ujeni] Water HyacinthTo anyone of you who might be interested in that water hyacinth problem that Christine's news mentioned (probably no one, right?)....We watched hyacinths take over one of our nearby reservoirs in Blantyre.Manual removal is pretty easy. It would take lots of man power but Malawi should have that, if it has money available to pay people. It may not cure the problem entirely but once the major push to get this take-over by the plant is under control a smaller, consistent effort should be able to contain the continuing problem.I've pulled it out of our river with no effort. It's not really rooted. I just hauled it up on the bank and it dried out and became very light and easy to haul away. It is a very pretty, horribly invasive plant that doesn't belong most places that it grows. We saw it in big patches in a lake near Kunming, China. They're worried too. Deforestation probably has nothing to do with the problem in Malawi; it's just as much a problem here in California.Used to be that they sprayed it here which always seemed to kill other good aquatic plants and some of the vegetation low on the banks that's probably important to some of the amphibians and invertebrates that use both land and water. I certainly would not have been happy about that spraying if I used the water for drinking, bathing, washing clothes etc. Now that we are a federally listed river for threatened fall run Chinook salmon they can't spray anymore. Luckily in our section of the Merced River floods washed it all downstream a few years ago. So now they worry downstream.Christine, you probably know more about things like control with weevils and whether weevils would be a problem after the hyacinth is gone. You introduce one foreign species to control another foreign species....not always good I would assume.Cathy------------------------original message:
Weed endangers
Malawi's main river
By the BBC's Raphael Tenthani in
Blantyre
A water weed is threatening to choke Malawi's
largest river.
Water hyacinths have spread across a large
section of the Shire River, according to a
report by the country's Fisheries Department.
The Shire, an outlet of Lake Malawi which
pours into the Zambezi River in Mozambique, is
not only used for fishing and transport: It is
also a major source of hydro-electric power.
Fisheries Director Shaibu Mapila said that if left
untackled water hyacinths could destroy the
Kamuzu Barrage, a dam operated by the
Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi
(Escom).
Drying up
He said the weeds may even force the river to
change course, displacing people along the
way.
In an extreme
scenario, the river
could disappear
entirely.
"I am not trying to be
alarmist," he said, "but
I know of the Kafue
River which dried up in
Zambia."
Environment Minister
Harry Thomson, after inspecting the extent of
the damage on Thursday, suggested that
Escom could flush the Kamuzu Barrage once a
week to break concentration of the weed, as
constant opening would make it flow down the
river.
But Escom's senior engineer Dapper
Chapalapata said this was not economically
viable: Constantly opening the barrage would
damage screens at power stations which may
result in endless power interruptions.
Weevil plan
Mr Chapalapata said Escom had already spent
$1.5m to repair damage caused by the weeds.
The Fisheries Department survey blames the
problem of water weeds on deforestation.
Environmentalists have
ruled out chemically
controlling the weed
as an option, saying
that would cause
long-term ecological
disaster.
Other options include
removing the weed
manually or using
machines.
In recent years the
authorities in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzanian
have been battling against the spread of water
hyacinths on Lake Victoria.
There scientists have found that one of the
most effective ways to control the weed has
been the release of weevils that feed on
hyacinths.
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