Mense van die Tuin

Next year's a big year on the corporate front: I am currently in the employ of a parastatal with a deep history, a history that has developed over a century.  Yes, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens was founded in 1913, and now we're gearing up for recognition of that fact.   For me, personally, there are things linked to that that are redolent with echoes of nostalgia, apprehension, and even optimism about opportunity.  But that's another story for later.  Right now I'd like to report that, in anticipation of the big 100, a group of people of +25 years standing gathered in the Conservatory at Kirstenbosch on 15 August and had a memories and stories session, which we video-taped.  (I was behind the camera, so my involvement was indirect, and my verbal contribution restricted to interjections like "rolling", or "was jy nie bang vir die slange?") 

My purpose now, at half-past four on a friday afternoon, is to provide access to a very roughly cut introduction to that meeting, and to introduce you briefly to some of the wonderful people that have helped to build this organization.  The stories they shared that day will come a bit later.

You can find that 2 and a half minute clip on YouTube at:

herinneringe -- People of the Garden speak

What did we go back to KZN to do?

CareTakers in Maputaland

On 19th March 2012, a Cape Town based film team set out for the far north to capture sequences for the latest CareTakers documentary (Working title:  Making the case for biodiversity).  The film supplements coverage that we did of the COP17 climate change conference in Durban in Nov/Dec last year, linking the thoughts, theories and views of experts to environmental restoration and management work on the ground.   (See the CareTakers vimeo clips of COP17 for interviews with those experts).   It was good to be out in the field again!

Our trip first took us to the Mkhuze River floodplain, where Mbali Kubheka, the KZN coordinator of the national Working for Wetlands Programme, showed us the restoration work being done that improves the hydrology of these important wetlands feeding the extensive St Lucia lake system.   

Mbali and her Project Implementer (another Mbali) gave us lots to film, and also took time out on Human Rights Day to visit members of the community who benefit directly from improved wetland condition, both directly for access to water, and for the supply of reeds that they harvest for the making of mats and baskets.

  

For spectacular nature scenes, we couldn?t have been better looked after than through the hospitality of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park.  Thandi Tshabalala facilitated a wonderful two days in the Park, which included a school outing guided by outreach educationist Mary Barnes, and also lined up a sunset boat trip on which we were treated to shots of hippos, crocs, kingfishers, hippos, a fish eagle, pelicans, and hippos. 

Wonderful stuff.   Thanks Working for Wetlands! Thanks iSimangaliso Wetland Park!  

Captions to photos:

1. Mbali Kubheka talking to camera

2, Mbali learning the craft of mat weaving

3. Cameraman Eran, Director Laurence at Mission Rocks

4. Thandi Tshabalala of iSimangaliso WP explains

5.  Early morning near Cape Vidal

6.  Sunset and pelican in the estuary

NOTE:  you can get more information about the CareTakers project by visiting the website http://www.caretakers.co.za/

What were we doing in KZN?

Laurence films Doug while Mbali checks a weir in Penny Park

Mbali and Doug look out across the Penny Park wetland
 form the ridge on the north side

Late Friday afternoon and I really just want to go home,  The building is quiet, the sun has set behind the mountain and there are just too many things swirling around in my head.  But on may schedule for the whole week has been a promise to get down a few words about my trip last week to KZN, exploring the next CareTakers film shoot.  On the itinerary were three sites, two for direct visits to look at the potential of the stories that represented, and a third a bridge just too far.   Actually we discovered another wetland that from the outset we knew would be just too far, the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, or Greater St Lucia,   The irony being that we have now decided that that is where we will go to get the footage which we need to complete "Making the Case for Biodiversity".   Instead we did a sort of deductive process, and ruled out the site that we did visit for that purpose.   As delightful, instructive and pleasing as it was as a model wetland restoration site, Penny Park just outside of Kokstad didn't quite have the oomph that we needed in profile to match the footage that we'd already captured at COP17 and the Living Beehive at Durban Botanic Gardens (see earlier posts).  We, Laurence and myself, were treated to a great drive around PennyPark by project implementer Doug Woods and the WfWet Provincial Coordinator, Mbali Goge, who showed us the amazing things that can be done to bring back gouged out wetlands from the bring of disaster, using judiciously placed concrete weirs while generating work opportunities in the local community.   I'm not going to get that all written up now,   We did get a bit of footage of Doug and Mbali explaining things, and hopefully next week I can cut that and get it posted to YouTube,   In the mean time I'll try to find a still to plonk in here.    The other two project which are up for attention some time in the future, after we've made the case, are projects within the SANBI Grasslands Programme,  The one closest to receiving film making attention is the Umgano project in which the local Mabandla community, under the leadership of iNkosi Baleni, and the conservation guidance of Dr Bill Bainbridge, are building a model of sustainable land use which combines traditional land use, commercial stockfarming, and commercial timber production along with extensive grasslands conservation.   But that's a story for next week.    I think I just really needed to say that there is some wonderfully positive conservation work going on that is confronting the challenges faced by South Africa as it still struggles to find its liberated feed in a changing world that will have to be governed by a green economy.

iNkosi Baleni and Bill Bainbridge pause for a pic outside the iNkosi's office and meeting room

Nine months and not counting

 Late on a Friday afternoon, and the pre-retirement reflective mode has kicked in.  Resolved not to walk away from this office in less than 9 months time leaving piles of things committed to the garbage without inspection, I've started going through the boxes of slides and photographs that have been gathering dust since the digital camera was invented.   It's interesting that the images I find here don't quite match up in sharpness and resolution to those produced by my Canon G10, but they're certainly a whole bunch better than those of the middle era, when digital was new and cool and 250kb images would painlessly record history for evermore.  I still have to confront that part of the collection.    But what these ones, a couple of which I've inserted here, may lack in quality, they certainly make up for in layered memories.

Top, the  team of the Stress Ecology Research Programme, stationed at University of Cape Town (ca 1993) just prior to moving into the newly built Kirstenbosch Research Centre (see image in previous post for what it looks like now).  And the team? Back (l-r): Mike O'Callaghan; Mario Fritz, Stephanie Wand, Stanley Snyders, Charles Musil;  Middle: Guy Midgley, Mike Rutherford (team skipper), Debbie Hunter, Timm Hoffman; Front: Deryck de Witt, George Davis.   The three old codgers in that team are Charles, Mike and myself, and we all retire this year, 2012, the year of the Dragon!       Picture two (taken about 7 or 8 years earlier) shows that we made it out into the field sometimes, and that some of the team actually put their backs into it.  I thank Deryck (left) and De Wet Bosenberg (right) for substantial help with the soil pit at the Highlands research site,  I'm not sure how much of the physical labour was done by either Andrew Flynn (centre; where is he now?) or myself (behind camera).

A field trip that I remember well was an exploratory one to Namaqualand in about 1995, where Timm Hoffman set up a project that remains active to this day.  His subsequent work has been hugely influential in the way we now think about the role that botany, ecology and gritty determination play in rural development and the basis for a green economy.   In the bottom image,  Timm takes a photo of a fenceline contrast between communal and privately owned rangeland.

In these next 9 months I'll probably find many more photographs and memories about my 28 years in SANBI (ex-NBI (ex-BRI)) which I'll want to share with no-one in particular, but at least this blog is somewhere that I can think this stuff through without cluttering up my desk with scraps of paper and piles of unsortable photos.       Cheers.  G

The end of 2011 at Kirstenbosch Research Centre

I was just switching off my computer for the last time in 2011, when I thought the moment deserved a bit more ceremony than that.  So I grabbed my camera and stepped outside to catch an image from the front door here at the Centre.   Here is a final blog posting, accompanied by an old year look up at the amazing east face of Table Mountain that towers over us during our normal working day..  Mostly it just towers while we get on with all of the hugely important things that we need to get on with in biodiversity research, planning, policy advising.  Sometimes a visitor will remind us that the mountain  is overpoweringly there, and we'll have to glance up and agree as enthusiastically as possible  before we dive back into the virtual labyrinth behind our computer screens and meeting rooms to solve the problems that beset biodiversity conservation around the world.   But right now I'm going to send this on its way and take a few days off and try to regain some perspective, take stock of the good and productive things that happened in 2011, lament some of the unfortunate ones (like the scratch on the lens of my dear dear G10), and work out what I do to improve the good to bad ratio.  Let's hope that 2011 will turn out to be a year when we look more at the mountain, less at the politics of panic, and understand more deeply the economics of  nature.   Cheers..  Geo

Beehive interviews at COP17

Yannick Glemarec of UNDP talks to Kristal Maze
 in the Living Beehive

A number of leading biodiversity and climate change thinkers came past the Living Beehive at Durban Botanic Gardens  during COP17.   Some of those that we interviewed for a film on "Making the Case for Biodiversity" were:   Peter Seligmann, CEO of Conservation International; Yannick Glemarec, UNDP; Mcebisi Jonas, Eastern Cape MEC;  Simon Susman, CEO of Woolworths; and Carlor Manuel Rodriguies, Conservation International.    Listen to their interviews on the SANBI website:  <Click here>,  and for a video montage compiled by iKind Media, click <on this link to the vimeo site>

What is a Living Beehive?.

CLICK HERE for the 4-part process 

...and how might a Living Beehive find a place in the frenzy of the Climate Change COP17?
The explanation will be too long for a blog post, so let us just say that it's an installation that brings together sophisticated structural steel design, innovative vertical horticulture, glimpses of traditional uses of biodiversity, and a magical space that soothes the human soul.   You can have a look at a quick visual account of its growth on you-tube , or you can watch a more comprehensive version at  http://vimeo.com/32395022 .   See you in Durban 28 Nov to 9 Dec 2011.

The good news is that the Beehive, unlike most of the COP17 razzamatazz, will live on as a permanent feature of Durban Botanic Gardens.