Volunteer Day

Across the pond in the UK, volunteer days in villages seem to catch the imagination of the citizenry. Put up a poster in the local, and the next Saturday they seem to have people flocking to help tidy up the town or the stream, or the park. Our colleagues at Adopt-A-River have a monthly beach clean-up right here in KZN, and that seems to go well. It does perhaps help that the location is in a big city, from which it must be a bit easier to get a group of volunteers. In the highlands, the sites needing help are out in the countryside, and a volunteer has to travel there….in so doing, displaying a new level of commitment.

Nothwithstanding these fears, we have organised a volunteer day on the uMngeni River on Saturday 12th June 2021. The task at hand is to clear small sapling growth (wattles) off a very steep slope, on Brigadoon Farm on the uMngeni. This small cliff (about 15 metres high and around 200 metres long) was cleared of big trees in 2018. That task was completed by a specialist tree feller, with guys roping in with chainsaws. Of course the big trees are gone now, so it doesn’t make sense to pay a tree feller (upwards of R12,000 per day!) to cut small saplings.

In the last 2 years, follow up teams have cut saplings away either side of this cliff, but for safety reasons have avoided the slope itself.

Enter the Pine Busters!

Pine Busters are a fantastic group of volunteers who remove pines from hard-to-reach places in the Drakensberg. The thing they have in common is a love for mountain climbing, and they put these skills to work removing trees while hanging on ropes. While our site in the Dargle is tame compared to the cliffs they encounter in the berg, their skills are exactly what we need to get the job done.

They have offered to help us, and we are in return collecting a donation to help them out.

Volunteers to drag away the cut saplings, help fetch and carry gear, and maybe just get them a hot cup of coffee, are invited to join us for the day, or part thereof. We don’t mind if people come along to educate their kids, and all they do is re-fuel a chainsaw or go fetch a rope from the bakkie, we just need some hands on deck to make things go more smoothly.

So here is the invitation to you:

We meet at Taste Buds Farmstall at 8:30 am. Get there a few minutes and Sue or Nicky at Taste Buds will sell you a hot coffee and something delicious to eat. Then we leave any extra/unneeded cars behind and drive up to the farm (16kms) . Once there, we can leave low clearance cars near the dairy, and pile on any bakkies in the mix, and drive through the farm (2kms) to the site, which is right next to the farm road.

Anyone wanting to join for just a few hours, or anything up to the whole day, is most welcome to come along. The site is not dangerous, so we encourage you to bring your family and kids along. When you are there you can see what work has already been done on the river, and enjoy the spectacular views.

If you have any questions, please call or whatsapp Andrew on 082 57 44 262.

REPORT BACK:
Our small band of committed volunteers got a great job done. Most of the slope was cleared. A special thank-you to the members of “Pine Busters” who made it happen.

And as seen 5 months later in November 2021

The tipping point

At a recent meeting of sugar cane industry players, we learnt how bio-control can be an effective and very cost effective strategy to counter eldana worm. It also became apparent, however, that to convert to biological methods, one has to stop the traditional chemical solution, and then wait until the population of “good bugs” recovers from all the years of spraying, before they can be effective.

It’s that “wait” that’s the problem!

During the wait, the pests could wipe out a crop, or diminish income to the point where the farmer won’t survive the change-over. What businessman would take that risk!

This seems to be a common thread. There is a cost or a risk to converting to more environmentally friendly practices that simply isn’t worth it to the individual farmer, or community who would have to bear that cost or risk.

But what if the beneficiaries of the environmental gains, were to partially back the farmer, or share the risk, in return for the gain that they (and often the farmer) are after?

Let me give you a practical example of a beef farmer on the highland sourveld of KZN. He has a veld farm, and on it he has groves of wattle trees that were there before he was born. If he felled them and converted that land back to veld, he would gain, lets say 60 ha of grazing. But the felling, erosion control, replacement of the woodlot (with one of a more desirable tree species…for storm cover for cattle) , grass planting and five to ten years of weed control, will cost him about R10,000 per hectare.

A farmer recently told me that he had done the sums, and that in the lifetime of him and his son, they will never generate enough beef farming income to cover that. Sixty hectares at R10,000 per hectare: that’s a R600,000 loan from the bank, plus interest. And what NGO would invest R600,000 on a private farm for extra water, the extent of which can’t immediately be measured? The result is that nothing gets done, and the wattle groves stay there. The farmer still wants to get rid of them, and the city below still wants more water, but a generation goes by, wattle seed keeps spreading, and nothing changes.

Maybe we need a catalyst who asks:

• How much would company X invest in creating employment opportunities for its CSI score?

• How much would municipality Y invest to generate more water to fill the municipal dam?

• Is there a risk that can be insured?

• How much would the farmer invest to get that land back into beef production?

• How much would the local farm-stay put in, to be able to market their venue as part of an environmental project?

• How much would the seed company put in as part of an advertisement for their grass seed?

The chances are, that if each of the entities in the above example stretched their budget, right to the brink of what they are comfortable with, and if there was a protagonist with enough passion to get them to the point where they all said “OK, let’s do this!” , that might just be the tipping point that gets the job done and changes the landscape for the better, forever.

At Upland River Conservation we are always searching for the environmental wins that will benefit a catchment (Examples: fencing off river banks, protecting springs, putting in contour belts, planting row crops further from the stream, blocking drains that dried up wet areas, managing for better veld condition……)

We are also thinking about what the costs and risks would be to achieve those wins.

Then we consider who would gain from the work, and in what ways, and how much investment might it justify from them.

We believe that society cannot expect the landowner (farmer or rural community alike) to shoulder the burden of this work. We are passionate about getting the work done. We are looking at building project concepts that reach the tipping point. Call us the passionate protagonist.