About us
About the Overberg Renosterveld Trust
The Overberg Renosterveld Trust, which was registered and founded in 2012, is the brain child of our Chief Executive Officer, Dr Odette Curtis-Scott. Her passion for Renosterveld conservation combined with her research knowledge of its management led to establishment of the Trust. Its sole purpose is the conservation of threatened and neglected lowland habitats in the Overberg, South Africa, with a focus on Renosterveld.
The ORT is governed by a small Governing Board comprising experts in the field of conservation and is run on a day-to-day basis by a small and dynamic team.
What We Do
The Overberg’s lowlands today are dominated by a combination of crop- and livestock farming, interspersed with small pockets of Renosterveld, which are severely fragmented, isolated, and generally poorly managed. Renosterveld is not only under threat from inappropriate agricultural practices, such as overgrazing, illegal ploughing of virgin land, and inappropriate fire regimes, but also extremely vulnerable to the damaging impacts of fragmentation and mismanagement, putting it at high risk of extinction. The combination of extremely high biodiversity value and very high threats make this system one that requires urgent conservation attention.
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
The ORT was set up in order to address this urgent conservation priority. The ORT is uniquely positioned to bring landowners, communities, NGOs, and wildlife agencies together to conserve the last of the Renosterveld in several strategic locations. Our aim is to bring agriculture and conservation into harmony by establishing long-term, positive relationships with landowners and creating awareness of the importance of ecosystem functioning and integrity and the benefits of ecosystem services.
Read more for the full Renosterveld story.
Vision, Mission & Objectives of the ORT:
VISION of the Overberg Renosterveld Trust
Renosterveld landscapes are sustainably managed to integrate biodiversity, ecosystem function and livelihoods.
MISSION of the Overberg Renosterveld Trust
To collaborate and foster partnerships with landowners and other stakeholders to implement sustainable land management practices in the renosterveld, enhancing connectivity and landscape resilience.
Our Objectives
Our objectives are essentially based on three main ‘pillars’: i) securing the largest remnants of renosterveld for conservation in perpetuity through a combination of land purchase and Conservation Easements, ii) linking critical fragments through the restoration of corridors (with an emphasis on watercourses) and iii) spreading awareness amongst landowners with renosterveld about the importance of renosterveld management in a way that affects long-term changes in attitudes and veld management.
The thread that ties all these objectives together is the building of relationships with our most important stakeholders: the landowners, while we consider our relationships with our partners in the landscape (in both the NGO and government sectors) equally important. In parallel with this conservation work, we coordinate a dynamic and growing collaborative research team, of post-graduate students and ecologists with an interest in exploring a suite of questions around renosterveld ecology.