The impact of alien tree clearing on soil and vegetation recovery remains largely understudied. This study focused on changes in soil and vegetation properties following Acacia removal. The aim was to quantify the long‐term consequences of alien clearing. Paired cleared (old – 15 years; medium – 11 years; recent – 6 years) and uncleared sites were selected along the Palmiet catchment in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Various soil physico‐chemical properties (soil moisture, pH, P, N, C, K, Na, Ca, Mg and soil repellency) and vegetation diversity measures were studied on 10 m × 10 m plots. Results indicate that measured soil nutrients are significantly (P < 0.05) lower in cleared than in uncleared sites. However, comparisons among cleared sites alone indicate that soil properties are recovering with older cleared sites having higher (P < 0.05) nutrients than recent cleared sites. Soils in uncleared sites are more repellent than soil in cleared sites. Vegetation recovery in cleared sites was taking place with older cleared sites having higher native species diversity than recently cleared site. We conclude that the removal of alien plants could have caused a reduction in soil nutrients. However, as native vegetation recovers on cleared sites, soil nutrients are gradually improving.

Rivers are now facing increasing pressure and demand to provide water directly for drinking, farming and supporting industries as a result of rapidly growing global human population. Globally, the most common practice for catchment managers is to limit water abstraction and changes to stream flow by setting environmental flow standards that guard and maintain the natural ecosystem characteristics. Since the development of the environmental flow concept and methods in South Africa, very few studies have assessed the institutional constraints towards environmental flow implementation. This study determined stream flow trends over time by fitting simple linear regression model to mean daily stream flow data at three selected stations in the Luvuvhu River Catchment (LRC). We also conducted a literature search to review, firstly the response of aquatic organisms (fish and macroinvertebrate) to changes in habitat conditions and secondly on local challenges affecting the sustainable implementation of environmental flow regime and related water resources management strategies. All the three stream flow stations show decreasing stream flow volume of 1 and 2 orders of magnitude faster in some stations with the possibility that flow will cease in the near future. Qualitative analyses from both local and international literature search found that the main challenges facing the implementation of sustainable flow strategies and management are absence of catchment management agency, lack of understanding of environmental flow benefits, limited financial budget, lack of capacity and conflict of interest. Rivers with changing stream flows tend to lose sensitive species. The development of scientifically credible catchment-wide environmental flow and abstraction thresholds for rivers within the LRC would make a major contribution in minimizing the declining stream flow volumes. Monitoring and reporting should be prioritized to give regular accounts of the state of our rivers.