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The Department of Environmental Affairs’ strategic plan1 for 2012–2017 outlines programmes and projects that collectively aim to (1) ‘contribute to sustainable development, livelihoods, green and inclusive economic growth through facilitating skills development, employment creation and infrastructure development’ and (2) ‘restore and maintain vegetation structure and function in order to contribute to ecosystem services’. The largest programme is the Working for Water programme, which strives to control invasive alien species (until recently only plants), and in so doing to protect essential ecosystem services. Several related programmes on forests, fire, wetlands and energy address overlapping issues that can either assist with, or enhance the benefits of, invasive alien plant control. These programmes collectively have a 3-year budget of R7.8 billion, arguably the most generous funding for an environmental problem that South Africa has ever seen. Although Working for Water operated for 16 years under the administration of the Department of Water Affairs, its recent transfer to the Department of Environmental Affairs, its consolidation with other initiatives and its substantially increased funding offer opportunities to the scientific community to inform improvements in ecosystem management. Through careful monitoring, assessment and analysis, important lessons can be learned and fed back into the programmes to continually improve management.