Growing Together: the learning cycle in urban nature conservation

This is a hurriedly posted blog to draw your attention to a short video clip on you-tube.
In it, Tanya Layne talks about experiences gained during the lifespan of the project Cape Flats Nature, and publication of the book "Growing Together"

Hear what she has to say by going to :    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh5XI9z7XRc

I'll finish this off after I come back from leave in November

George

Making the Case for Biodiversity

A new SANBI video has been posted on You Tube.  It covers an exciting exploratory workshop  held at Kirstenbosch on 13 June 2011.    I'll give a fuller description of it  here in the next few days, but you can still go and listen to a conversation between Kristal Maze, SANBI Chief Director of Biodiversity Mainstreaming, and Mike Freedman, facilitator from Freedthinkers..

click the link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKhqL4hYLa0

In Namaqualand with Conservation South Africa (4): A quick retrospective at Leliefontein and then down to the Coast

This posting  is just a place saver for the video material that I still need to edit from the trip with CSA.
I have some material from an earlier visit to Leliefontein, which is an interview with Bertus Meisenheimer and Henry Engelbrecht about the CSA's project Biodiversity and Red Meat Initiative (BRI).  This project looks to local smallstock farmers and asks them to engage with the very real, and very difficult problem that they face in coming to terms with the fact that stock numbers are negatively affecting the landscape, with overgrazing leading to degradation of vegetation, erosion, and impact son water resources.   There is no easy answer.  That is a short piece that I want to include for Leliefontein before we get into the car and travel down to Port Nolloth where we visit two further Skeppies projects.   (I will need to explain this thing about Skeppies, probably simply as a hyperlink to that funding structure that allows resources to flow to the kinds of projects covered by this series of video clips).   At Port Nolloth we meet with two young female volunteers who oversee the Port Nolloth Bird Park, which is a restoration project that is has reclaimed the estuarine habitat from neglect and degradation, and established a potentially important resource for local recreation and education.    The second project is a much more hardcore economic initiative, involving the harvesting of kelp from the beaches adjacent to Port Nolloth.  Harvested kelp is dried, shredded and packed,  and then sold into the market as fertilizer.   Living off the edge of the land.  Malinda Gardiner again narrates us through these two projects at the sea.    

I hope to have these clips posted in the next week or two.  Life has just got a bit too busy right now to try to fit them in.

In Namaqualand with Conservation South Africa (3): The Church Wetland

Visit the Leliefontein church wetland at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r3QFAY00e0

<this entry still very much in draft form.... I hope to get back to it in the next couple of days.... George 9 June 2011 >

16 May 2011: 

Before leaving Leliefontein, we went round the corner from Vera's place to see what Ivan and his team of workers were doing in the churchyard.  In a place as dry as Leliefontein, water is a valuable resource and securing its supply is an important part of climate-proofing.

In the posted video clip, Ivan Roberts talks to Malinda and gives some of the background to work in the backyard of the historical Methodist Church in Leliefontein.   At one level it's just another community care project in which local members of the parish are making their patch something to be proud of.    But the godliness goes further than that:  In the arid landscapes of Namaqualand, Leliefontein is something of an oasis.  Living care is necessary to protect the water that collects in the geological nooks and crannies of the village, undoubtedly what drew Nama herders to settling there many centuries ahead of the Methodist missionaries.   By removing the thirsty alien poplar trees, the natural springs are returning to functionality.    : 

 NOTE:   I realize that I haven't included any footage of the landscape in which Leliefontein is situated.  From the footage of the churchyard, it looks like a pretty green place, but don't be fooled, that is because we were standing in a WETLAND.   Although high for the area because of its altitude, the annual rainfall is of the order of 200mm per year.  

Ivan Roberts, Wetland Rehab Contractor




Malinda Gardiner: CSA comms

A poplar removed from the wetland



In Namaqualand with Conservation South Africa (2): Vera's Kookskerm

View the video clip of Vera's kookskerm here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNjkqs4WFYk

 

 

Vera Engelbrecht



Vera discusses the off-season

kookskerm with the CSA team

This is part 2 of 5-part video diary entry covering a visit with Conservation South Africa (CSA)  to climate adaptation projects in Namaqualand, Northern Cape.   Here we visit Vera Engelbrecht, a local tourism entrepreneur in Leliefontein, and hear about her efforts to generate an income in the beautiful but isolated town of Leliefontein, which sees many visitors during the wildflower season in early spring, but little else for the rest of the year.    Vera's interview is in Afrikaans, but interviewer Malinda Gardiner of CSA introduces us to the project and summarizes in English.

In Namaqualand with Conservation South Africa (1): Ouma Hannah se kookskerm

View video diary entry:  Ouma Hannah se Kookskerm

On the weekend of 14 & 15 May I was at Ratelgat, attending an assembly of people of the Griqua nation.  This was a film-making outing of a team adding material to the CareTakers series, looking for a story of home-coming:  Griqua people come to be at this ancient home site on the Knersvlakte, to pay respects to their leaders, and to meet the new challenges posed by threats to biodiversity, land-use pressures, and the insidious dangers of climate change.  That was a moving week-end, and we hope to have the 9th CareTakers film complete by August. But that is not what this posting is about.

When my filming colleagues headed south on the N7 back to Cape Town, I went north to meet with the team of Conservation South Africa (aka Conservation International) working in Namaqualand. Together we visited five of their projects in the area, all of which are initiatives to grow local skills and capacity for people to engage with a nature-based economy in the face of regional mine-closures, unsustainable levels of small-stock farming, and the harsh realities of climate vairability. 

In this, the first of a planned five video-diary entries, we meet Ouma Hannah and her two colleagues who have set up a small traditional eatery, complete with matjies huts and a kookskerm (cooking shelter).   Malinda Gardiner of CSA is our guide and narrator for this visit.   I'm afraid that the interview with Ouma Hannah has not been translated from Afrikaans as yet, something I hope to do when time permits. I'd first like to get all of the 5 clips completed:  Even if you don't understand Afrikaans, Ouma Hannah is very eloquent.

George 26 May 2011

Biodiversity and Mining: Kristal Maze talks to Martin Creamer



Kristal Maze, Chief Director
Biodiversity Mainstreaming at SANBI
 (photo from Mining Weekly)

 If you want to hear how biodiversity is presented to practitioners in the callous world of mining, have a listen to Kristal Maze and Dan Sonneberg in conversation with Martin Creamer, the legendary and progressive journalist of engineering and mining.  You can find them on  http://www.miningweekly.com/article/how-to-mine-and-shine-2011-05-20  "We have a real ally in Martin Creamer", Kristal has been heard to say.  And indeed, he has been open to airing the biodiversity debate for a long time, going back to the NBI days of the Ball Agreement (anyone remember that?).   Visit the site above and watch Kristal carving a convincing niche for the biodiversity economy in the in the harsh world of coal-fired energy, karoo-fracking and strip mining.