Overberg media trip: Conservation management – what’s in it for farmers? (part 4)

Posted 2018-12-09

*Photo: Lynch gives an overview of conservation work on farms.*

The aim of the Overberg Renosterveld Conservation Trust (ORCT)’s efforts is to improve habitat condition and increase ecosystem resilience. When you are looking after nature, it looks after you.

To reach this stage of ecosystem service, the ORCT looks at halting the degradation caused by:

incorrect fire regimes

alien invasive plant species

soil erosion

pesticide drift and

supplementary feeding.

Landowners are advised to burn in late summer or early autumn (the most favourable time for palatable grasses and bulbs in the Renosterveld), and also not to burn too frequently (every seven to twelve years). The veld should be left for 18 – 24 months afterwards (no grazing). Apart from the expertise supplied by the ORCT, landowners can also access funding for activities like ecological burns and subsequent fencing.

*Landowner Christina Stewart responds to questions from the media. The Stewarts run a grain and sheep farm. Mrs Stewart has become a member of the ORCT’s board.*

Much of the rehabilitation work happens by looking after the watercourses (the subject of the previous blog) and corridors on land. Corridors between farm lands, especially corridors around watercourses, are encouraged as good agricultural practice, and have certain advantages to landowners:

Funds and expertise can be accessed (like that of the Green Trust and Overberg Renosterveld Conservation Trust).
Less soil ends up in the water.
Corridors lead to better quality water (corridors play a role in neutralising chemicals from fertilisers, pesticides etc).
In times of a drought, this water is of value to farmers.

Several times during the day, Curtis-Scott could be seen photographing plants and flowers, and I would later read that a member of the legume family, Polhillia curtisiae, is named after her. The handbook that the ORCT makes available to farmers, The Overberg Rûens Renosterveld, includes a brief overview of the region’s mammals, birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, spiders and scorpions. Most of the photographs are credited to Curtis-Scott. I envy the world she sees and knows while we all look on the same view.

Aspalathus and pollinator. Photo used courtesy of Dr Curtis-Scott and the ORCT.

A small party went to have a closer look at rehabilitation efforts in a gully, visible from two kilometres away (covered in the next blog), after which we board the bus.

The Conservation Easement Programme is an inexpensive, long-term conservation commitment by landowners who are given assistance with management, and financial aid towards implementing the agreement.

The management plan in a Conservation Easement sets out on a map the “production” vs “conservation” areas. The agreement becomes part of the title deeds of the property, meaning that it is transferred to future owners of the land as well.

We had been on the tar for some ten kilometres when we noticed three blue cranes on our left. Appreciation gave way to excitement as several more were spotted as the bus came to a halt. I counted a total of seventeen of this species which was previously on the critically endangered list but has now been relegated to vulnerable but stable.

Blue cranes, South Africa’s national bird, are no longer critically endangered.

Earlier, Keir Lynch had said: “In the Overberg, conservation didn’t save the blue cranes: agriculture did”. The bus is on the move again and we travel mostly in silence, glad to be out of the sun as we digest the results and future potential of the interventions we have seen this day.