African Wildlife & Environment Issue 84 2023

CONSERVATION

range of early onset neurodegenerative pathologies. The simple application of the precautionary principle suggests that in the absence of information to the contrary, it is prudent to default to the worst-case scenario, and accept that this is likely, until proven otherwise.This is the position taken by the author in this article.

manifest as a potent desire by members of the public to ‘do something’, yet both are oblivious to the latest research that is reporting a statistical correlation to the prevalence of neurodegenerative pathologies in the population living adjacent to hyacinth infested water bodies.

Floating wetlands can be tethered to the bottom to prevent them from moving, while providing a biodiverse habitat, but also reducing the production of HAB contaminated aerosols

With this as the point of departure, we can now turn our attention to growing efforts to remove floating weed such as water hyacinth from highly eutrophic dams like Hartbeespoort. The dominant narrative seems to be that floating weed is offensive, so it must be removed, with considerable efforts being made to achieve this objective. Two drivers of this public desire seem to be discernable. The first driver is the offensive nature of the contaminated water, covered with a large floating mat of hyacinth. The second driver is the apparent desire to create open waterways for recreational activities, such as skiing and yachting. Both drivers

Is this the most prudent response given the reported results of the peer reviewed research cited in this article? It is the professional opinion of the author that this is not the most prudent response, for the following four reasons:

Reason #1:

The trophic status of any water column is nothing other than the mass balance between nutrients in the water, and the biomass that it can sustain. Stated simply, high levels of nutrients can sustain a

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