Ten years on

Ten years ago, Penny Rees and colleagues undertook a much publicized walk from the source of the uMngeni to the sea. They performed water sampling along the way, and wrote blog pots describing what they saw and the people they met along the way. It was a great piece of awareness building.

Ironically, I was not aware of the river walk at the time, and only became aware of it later. Thanks to the well recorded event on a blog site, that didn’t really matter….I was able to read about it later.

A year or so after the walk, the UEIP (uMngeni Ecological Infrastructure Partnership) was formed. Again, at the time, I was unaware of its formation.  But in a weird twist of fate, the day of the first signatures to that partnership, I was part of a social gathering of flyfishers in Maritzburg, where we held a lucky draw to raise funds for environmental work on the uMngeni.

Ten years down the line:

·         The Natal Fly Fishers Club raised over R350,000  to its “Roy Ward Fund” and spent most of it clearing wattle and re-grassing about 12kms of upper uMngeni river banks.

·         I formed Upland River Conservation and made the care of the upper uMngeni and other rivers my full time vocation.

·         The Furth Stream has been cleared, re-cleared, and cleared again. This year it has received grass seeding in a hope to stem the tide of wattle.

·         Other uMngeni reaches and tributaries have been cleared by us at Upland River Conservation: either privately funded by landowners, or with grants and donations.

·         The UEIP has had a lot of meetings and done a lot of strategizing and co-ordination. UEIP is in the process of forming a project co-ordination arm: a non-profit company called “Amanzi Ethu Nobuntu”.

·         Pre-formation, DUCT has adopted a project for Amanzi Ethu Nobuntu…the DSI Enviro Champs project. In fact, it adopted the first project, which employed 300 people doing environmental work for 3 months, and now it is in the second project with 650 people working over 8 months. Some of these Enviro Champs are being hosted by the Dargle Conservancy, and within that the team is being deployed with sponsorship by the Natal Fly Fishers club to maintain its 12 + kms.

·         Working for Water (now known as NRM) has been stalled due to all manner of government inefficiencies, but is set to re-start shortly and we will be directing their teams to carefully selected sites on the upper uMngeni.

·         Pepsico, working though WWF and ourselves has funded a project to clear steep and inaccessible spots along the upper uMngeni…work started in the spring, is currently on hold due to the season, and will commence again this spring.

·         Several projects have been proposed and grants applied for. Many have been declined. Two are looking hopeful.

But through all this, there remains an eclectic mix of situations. Millions of people remain unaware of the peril that the uMngeni catchment is in, despite Penny and her colleagues wonderful endeavour. The situation is all the more masked by the current exceptionally wet season. Most people I speak to are unaware of the approval of the Smithfield dam, the fact that it represents yet another hard infrastructure development while the more financially viable green infrastructure remains under-funded, and under-focused.  

I think the upper parts of the uMngeni where I am focused are generally looking better. Many private landowners are playing their part, and working hard to remove alien plants. Some still plough up and down hills, plough up virgin veld without authorization, dig bare firebreaks down steep hills, drain wetlands and allow their slurry dams to overflow.

I personally spend a lot more time worrying about the river, and coming up with schemes and plans to make it better. I have to acknowledge though, that I spend too much time writing proposals, and attending meetings, and too little time out on the river with a saw in my hand and grass seed in my pocket, like I did when this was entirely a volunteer, after-hours endeavour. I am very mindful of this. There is a lot of report writing going on out there, and it swallows a LOT of money. I am resisting hard.

I have made up a mini SASS kit and gone out and done sampling along the upper river, and uploaded the results alongside Penny’s 2012 readings.  I found stoneflies. On Friday I was out on a tributary checking on a contractor. He had skipped a few saplings. I have a saw under the seat of my bakkie. I got to work. I remain committed to bucking the trend; not being sucked into report writing; not becoming that office guy; keeping the actual work in the landscape central to what I do..

What I have written is another book. It will be out later this year. The proceeds will be going to the Natal Fly Fishers Club’s river restoration fund (The Roy Ward Fund).

We soldier on.

Andrew Fowler

Director

Upland River Conservation