Our best-kept secret
Emily Taylor, EWT Communications and Marketing Manager, emilyt@ewt.org.za
This month’s tale from the field is a special one. It isn’t often that Support Services staff based at Head Office get to write stories about field trips, or at least ones that would be interesting! But in February, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) Communications and Marketing team was given the opportunity to get out from behind our desks and venture into the spectacular Soutpansberg mountains. And what a trip it was.
The VhaVenda call it “Tha vhani ya muno” – the Mountain of salt. Rising like an island from the surrounding bushveld flatlands, the forgotten Soutpansberg is South Africa’s best kept secret and one of the country’s most unique and unexplored natural areas. The name ‘Soutpansberg’ is derived from the large natural salt pan to the northwest of the range.
The Soutpansberg Mountains. Photo credit: Suzette Britz
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The Medike Mountain Reserve boasts 58 butterfly species, 15 scorpion, 19 amphibian, 61 reptile, 59 mammal, 229 bird, and 237 tree species. The Vulnerable Leopard, the Near Threatened Brown Hyaena and Natal Red Duiker, and the Endangered Mountain Reedbuck are among these.
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The Soutpansberg in Limpopo is South Africa’s northernmost mountain range and forms part of the UNESCO Vhembe Biosphere Reserve. The mountainous landscape comprises an impressive variety of habitats: forest, thick thornveld, savannah, and grassland – and is home to several iconic, rare, and Endangered species, including a plethora of endemic species of both fauna and flora (which occur nowhere else on Earth)! It is also a critical groundwater source. The EWT identified the urgent need to conserve the area, and in 2015, on behalf of the Roberts family in Australia, the EWT purchased the 1,398 ha Medike Mountain Reserve in the Soutpansberg. We subsequently received funding from the Rainforest Trust to purchase a neighbouring property, almost doubling the reserve’s size.
When the EWT began working on the mountain, we embarked on several ambitious projects to restore the integrity of the mountain by clearing large patches of alien and invasive plants that had encroached on native vegetation and affected the function of the water sources on the mountain. Check out our Forgotten Mountain video to see the benefits these projects have had for the landowners and local communities. The EWT also began to engage with neighbouring landowners about interlinking their properties and creating an opportunity for the community to unite and optimise the mountain’s value as an ecotourism destination. Many landowners welcomed the opportunity for collaboration, and 17 have already decided to join the EWT in legally declaring their properties as one large protected area spanning 22,000 ha of the Western Soutpansberg, called the Western Soutpansberg Nature Reserve (WSNR). The collective vision for the WSNR is to create and protect a connected landscape under formal conservation, covering priority species, habitats, hydrologically important areas, and cultural heritage, for the benefit of biodiversity, ecosystems, and people in perpetuity.
The Old Salt Trail is one of the first projects initiated to share the mountain and its unique and diverse landscapes and cultural heritage with others, generate income for local people, and secure a sustainable future for the WSNR and Luvhondo Nature Reserves. The long-term vision is for this project to catalyse a successful ecotourism initiative, bringing visitors to the mountain in an ecologically sensitive way. Hikers will be able to experience the exceptional beauty and biodiversity on offer while gaining knowledge from local trail guides and supporting local socio-economic development within a protected environment.
The EWT’s Communications and Marketing Team. From left to right, Kedibone Chauchau, Suzette Britz, and Emily Taylor
This particular field trip enabled the Communications and Marketing team to visit the EWT’s Medike Mountain Reserve and neighbouring properties to experience first-hand the unique mountain landscape and meet with the local landowners and communities to better understand how to market the area, and the Old Salt Trail in particular, as a unique ecotourism destination.
The Soutpansberg, and Medike in particular, is known for its astonishing diversity of landscapes and habitats , and as the geology changes, so too do the colours of the soil, the topography, the shape, size, and density of the vegetation, and the animals that occupy each habitat. And a few hundred metres later, they all change again. One minute we marvelled at the less dense thorn-veld with its brown soils, patches of golden grass, and fine-leafed thorn trees; the next, at the dense green bushveld packed with broad-leafed Bushwillows, Gardenias, Silver Cluster Leafs, and the remarkable Rock Figs that wrap themselves around and push through the mammoth rocks.
I was a field officer once upon a time, and, perhaps out of self-preservation, I often forget the utter bliss that being in the bush brings. I almost forgot that I was there for work and found so much joy just driving along, chatting to the landowners and the EWT’s Soutpansberg Rangers, and seeing first-hand what they have all achieved in the last few years. More than that, though, it was touching and inspiring to witness the connection that those living and working there have with “the mountain”, as they affectionately call it. I completely and instantly understood why they have this deep and eternal love for this land – it is undeniably one of the most enchanting places on Earth. But don’t take my word for it – you need to see it to fully comprehend its magic – contact Catherine Vise for more information on how to find the forgotten mountain.
Don’t miss out!
This spectacular range of Mountains will host the second running of the Soutpansberg Mountain Marathon. With 42 km, 21 km,10 km, and 5km courses on offer, all start and finish and Schoemansdal (30 mins from Louis Trichardt) at the base of the mountain range. The longer three courses climb up the mountain and can be considered proper challenges. To register, click here.
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Fighting landslides in Rukiga
Phionah Orishaba, EWT’s African Crane Conservation Programme/International Crane Foundation Partnership, Field Officer – Southwestern Uganda, PhionaO@ewt.org.za
April 2022
Kigezi region in southwestern Uganda has always experienced heavy rains in March-May and September–November, which are also the crop growing seasons. Human activities on the steep hillslopes in Rukiga, including bush burning, deforestation, and overgrazing, have left the soil bare and eroded. With nothing holding the soil there, runoff from the steep slopes after heavy rains has increased drastically, causing landslides that destroy people’s property and crops below. The runoff removes soil and sediment in wetlands, affecting the local populations of Grey Crowned Cranes, such as in the Rushebeya-Kanyabaha wetland. Soil erosion control in Uganda is a critical issue that needs addressing for communities to thrive.
While an important economic activity in the Rukiga District, excessive eucalyptus planting on the hillslopes has become a great environmental challenge. Eucalyptus trees don’t allow the growth of short grass under their canopies, and rainwater runs quickly down the hillslopes and into the lowlands, where it causes havoc for the communities. Under pressure from an ever-increasing population, the fragmented land of Rukiga has continued to be divided into smaller plots to cater to the many children in each family. Households in the Rukiga district have an average number of six children each, and parents struggle to provide for the basic needs of their families.
Soil and water conservation initiatives have been proposed to remedy the issue of runoff that causes soil erosion in Rukiga district. One such project, funded by The Darwin Initiative, is being implemented by the International Crane Foundation/Endangered Wildlife Trust Partnership, Margaret Pyke Trust, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Rugarama Hospital in Rukiga district. The project has established two Napier grass demonstration gardens in
A Napier grass garden in Rukiga
Rwamucuucu and Kashambya sub-counties, in which Napier grass will be distributed to farmers to plant on the terraces of their gardens so that, when mature, the grass will stabilise these slopes. As part of the resilient livelihoods support that has been given to 248 households, each household was given 500 stem cuttings of three nodes each to be planted along their terraces, as soil and water conservation is one of the conservation actions identified in conservation agreements between the community conservation groups and project partners.
The Rwamucuucu sub-county chief Gideon Tumwesigyire has shown appreciation for the initiative. “This project has come at a time where it is needed because we normally experience heavy rains, sometimes unexpected, which has been a challenge to our community people. We therefore think that giving this Napier grass to farmers in the communities will cause a great impact by controlling soil erosion”.
Communal trenches dug on the hillslopes in Rukiga District to control the speed of water during heavy rains
The chairperson of the local council in Kashambya sub-county embraced the initiative saying that soil erosion has always been a great challenge to their people, but with this Napier grass, we hope to make a difference in the sub-county and district at large.
Community engagement has motivated the district leadership at all local council levels to join hands with ICF/EWT to make communal trenches on the hillslopes as one of the soil and conservation activities that can help to control the speed of water caused by heavy rains that have become disastrous to peoples, crops, and property. These simple conservation actions they can take themselves provide people in the district with the hope that they can stop fighting the land they depend on.
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EWT Golf Fundraiser Mar2022: A Hole-in-One for Conservation
The EWT Golf Fundraiser Mar2022 proved to be one of our most successful events yet. Held on Thursday, 17 March at the picturesque Westlake Golf Club, the tournament coincided perfectly with St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. Fortunately, the weather gods smiled upon us – players enjoyed a windless day under brilliant blue skies, with Table Mountain providing a breathtaking backdrop to the action.
Over 100 enthusiastic golfers participated in this important fundraising event. While some demonstrated impressive skills on the fairways, others showed equal commitment through their spirited approach to the game. Regardless of scores, every player contributed to the wonderful atmosphere and helped raise vital funds for conservation.
Ford Wildlife Foundation sponsored research vehicle
We are profoundly grateful to the Ford Wildlife Foundation for their generous support as our headline sponsor. Their ongoing partnership provides essential mobility solutions that enable our field teams to protect endangered species in remote areas. Furthermore, we extend our sincere appreciation to all our hole sponsors, prize donors, and participating businesses who helped make this day possible.
Special recognition must go to Sarah Raine, whose tireless efforts in organising the tournament were instrumental to its success. Additionally, we thank the Westlake Golf Club staff for their professional support throughout the event.
The funds raised will directly support our critical conservation programs. Specifically, they will help:
- Protect threatened species like rhinos and cheetahs
- Restore vital habitats
- Support community conservation initiatives
- Fund essential research projects
Looking ahead, we’re already planning our next fundraising events. We encourage all participants to visit our website’s Events page for updates on upcoming opportunities to support wildlife conservation. Your continued involvement makes our vital work possible.
To all who participated: thank you for golfing for a cause. Together, we’re making a real difference for Africa’s wildlife!
Frogs: Friends, fortune, or foes?
Dr Jeanne Tarrant, EWT Threatened Amphibian Programme Manager, jeannet@ewt.org.za
April 2022
Frogs and folklore go hand-in-hand. Countless children’s stories and fairy tales feature frogs and toads, and these amphibians have appeared in proverbs, rituals, and myths and have been interwoven into cultures across the world for centuries. Often, these stories represent frogs as important symbols of good fortune, fertility, and abundance. For example, each year, numerous frogs appear with the flooding of the Nile. These floods were vital to agriculture because they provided water for growing crops. Frogs represented abundance and became a symbol for the number hufnu, which meant 100,000. Many native cultures place small frog coins in their purses because they believe the coins will help them keep their money. The nature of the complete transformation of frogs from tadpoles also conjures a wide range of possible representations, including the option of transforming again into something even more wonderful, as in the traditional fairies about frogs turning into princes. The idea that a frog could be a prince – or anything else – makes them excellent fictional characters. Their metamorphosis from tadpole to frog can be seen as a form of “magic” and is relatable to young readers’ transformations, from toddler to child or child to teenager. Frogs symbolise hope in these stories.
In other cultures, toads represent less favourable symbols. In medieval Europe, for example, toads were considered evil creatures whose body parts had strange powers. Some of these views were articulated by authors from Classical Rome and Greece, whose writings had an immense influence on public opinion. Shakespeare’s play “As You Like It” alludes to a widely held superstition about a jewel that was supposed to be found inside the head of the toad. Once placed in a ring or necklace, this jewel, known as “toad-stone”, would warm up or change colour in the presence of venom, protecting the wearer from possible danger and foul play. Additionally, toads took on the role of evil spirits who assisted witches in their evil designs. In South Africa, frogs form part of similar cultural beliefs associated with witchcraft.
These myths and legends, and all stories really, are part of our journeys to better understand the world around us and are often derived as ways of protecting or warning us. Wanting to learn more about our local stories associated with frogs, we created the #FrogLore social media campaign for this year’s Leap Day for Frogs.
The Endangered Wildlife Trust’s annual Leap Day for Frogs campaign has been running for eight years, highlighting how important, interesting, and under threat frogs are.
Globally, amphibians remain the most threatened backboned animals on Earth, with 41% of species threatened with extinction. This 41% is a huge proportion of an ancient group of animals that have been successful for 300 million years, inhabiting all corners of the planet – except those too cold, too hot, or inaccessible to frogs, such as the Galapagos Islands. But now, because of habitat destruction, freshwater pollution, and a deadly fungus (which incidentally is having a way bigger impact on many more species than Covid-19), amphibians are facing a very real and rapid demise. It is a warning that our changing planet cannot support life in the way it should.
These sobering statistics are not cause for celebration, so why have fun in the name of frogs? While Leap Day for Frogs does highlight the threats to these creatures, it also celebrates them and creates an appreciation for them, which is the first step towards recognising their importance. Leap Day for Frogs invites members of the public to get involved however and wherever they like – be this by creating frog art or poetry at schools, cleaning up a local wetland, learning more about frogs, or playing a game of leapfrog!
Leap Day for Frogs event in Ipithi Nature Reserve on 26 February 2022
This year, in addition to the FrogLore campaign, we were fortunate to host in-person events again. We partnered with Kloof Conservancy to run a fun day of activities and a night frog walk at Ipithi Nature Reserve in Gillitts on 26 February, with over 300 people attending! We also joined forces with Hillcrest Conservancy, where 120 people joined a frog talk and walk at Springside Nature Reserve. Both amazing turnouts demonstrate that families are ready to get out to explore their local green spaces – in many instances, for the first time. Through our multiple partnerships and independent lessons, we also engaged over 700 school learners in 2022 already.
Through the FrogLore social media campaign, we reached over 34,000 people, and we received some stories – mostly related to lightning and frogs. One event participant mentioned a belief in eSwatini that if you dig up a frog, you will be struck by lightning! There is a fairly common association between frogs and weather events, which makes sense as frogs emerge during rain, and this natural occurrence may be at the root of many similar beliefs. Frogs also have very long tongues, which may explain why some think frogs shoot lightning from their mouths!
What stories or beliefs about frogs have you heard?
Please share them with us via our social media platforms with #Froglore or email ewt@ewt.org.za.
The more we know about people’s beliefs and attitudes towards frogs, the more we can promote positive interactions and save more frogs.
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How well are we considering nature in covid recovery plans in Africa?
Harriet Davies-Mostert, EWT Head of Conservation, harrietd@ewt.org.za
Panel Discussion, IUCN Global Virtual Members’ Conference on Nature-based Recovery
1 February 2022
The Covid-19 pandemic triggered a global economic crisis, and Africa’s GDP shrank by 2.1% in 2020, its worst recession in more than five decades. Southern Africa was hardest hit, with an economic contraction of 7%. Food insecurity and debt have been rising, and many development gains are being lost. The African Development Bank estimates that Covid-19 has increased the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, with as many as 38.7 million more Africans sliding into this category.
As in other parts of the world, immediate responses to the pandemic have been to focus on containing the virus, addressing the immediate health crisis, and limiting economic fallout. But a large part of the conversation has also been about the pandemic, which represents an opportunity to shift our economic models onto a greener and more inclusive trajectory.
Africa is home to tremendous biodiversity and natural resources, but these are experiencing dramatic losses due to agricultural expansion, overharvesting, alien invasive species, pollution, and climate change. It is vital that governments use post-Covid recovery spending to meet economic objectives like jobs, health, education, and economic growth – while also meeting the environmental goal of a greener, inclusive, and sustainable development trajectory.
As part of broader recovery efforts on the African continent, the African Union Commission launched a 5-year Green Recovery Action Plan in July 2021. This plan aims to ramp up action on five priority areas, including improving climate finance; supporting the just transition to renewable energy; nature-based solutions and a focus on biodiversity; resilient agriculture; and green and resilient cities.
To support this action plan, the African Ministerial Conference on the environment adopted the African Green Stimulus Programme, which seeks to address the socio-economic and environmental impacts of the pandemic and to unlock and harness the opportunities which a sustainable approach can bring for the continent of Africa.
An online platform was launched in September 2021 to support the roll-out of the stimulus programme. However, there is still a lot of work to be done. The programme aims to mobilise sufficient, additional resources and the effective use of these resources to implement a diverse portfolio of initiatives. And it will only be able to deliver impactful results at scale when these resources materialise.
Several grants have been made towards promoting green and inclusive recovery. For example, GIZ recently approved an award of nearly 1 million euros to a consortium led by South African National Parks to support Covid-19 relief efforts along the boundary of Kruger National Park in South Africa. This programme will support sustainable supply chains, enterprise development, green entrepreneurship, and responsible resource use to drive sustainable jobs and livelihoods.
Nature-based tourism was one of the main casualties of the economic shutdowns, and there have been many grants and green recovery initiatives aimed at recovering this critical sector.
The African Nature-Based Tourism Platform was initiated in April last year with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to forge connections between funders and communities, nature-based tourism enterprises, and conservation areas in southern and eastern Africa. The 3-year project aims to mobilise at least $15 million. The platform gathers data on the impacts of COVID-19 on local communities and small businesses in the nature-based tourism sector and shares this information to unlock funding streams that will bring greater resilience to nature-based tourism in the future.
While Africa’s agenda 2063 aims to industrialise the continent, there is widespread recognition and commitment that this must be done in a low carbon, nature-positive way. We need a new paradigm for development that centres on sustainable development and building forward better. And this isn’t just because it’s the right thing to do: for example, work done by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa shows that in South Africa, investing in the green economy and nature-based solutions provides 250% more jobs than investing in similar fossil-fuel-based industries. So investment in nature-based economies and nature-based solutions in Africa makes good business sense.
Most of us would agree that post-covid recovery packages have failed to incorporate nature in the seismic way that many of us had hoped they would at the start of the pandemic. Our region has some excellent and ambitious programmes and initiatives, but they remain largely underfunded and under-capacitated. Most African countries cannot raise money from their own economies to implement their recovery plans, and the cost of finance is disproportionately high for African countries compared to more developed nations. Global financial flows, from both the public and private sectors, need to be unlocked to ensure that development in Africa moves along a pathway in which people can have sustainable livelihoods without exacerbating the climate and biodiversity crises.
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