OVERBERG RENOSTERVELD CONSERVATION TRUST NEWS
Newsletter 35 | December 2024
by Dr Odette Curtis-Scott
Without renosterveld’s riches, our lives are poorer
A journalist for a well-known environmental programme once asked me,
“Why does it matter if renosterveld goes extinct?”
That was quite a moment for me. If he’d seen my face (it was a telephonic interview), he might have seen the shock. But I’m sure he felt it over the phone. It occurred to me: If I need to convince an environmental journalist that this habitat must be protected, how much more then those who don’t understand the role that nature plays?
So when well-known winemaker Bruce Jack asked me to contribute to his Jack Journal – just in time for World Wildlife Conservation Day celebrated today – it was a chance to really address this question. And to try and answer it in a way that would hopefully encourage even our cynical journalist that we need to do more for renosterveld.
Size matters: A new large-scale renosterveld landscape protected
The newly signed conservation easement, Oudekraalskop, brings Endangered Eastern Rûens Shale Renosterveld and Rûens Silcrete Renosterveld under protection in
An invisible crisis in renosterveld
The tiny relationships holding everything together. Together with fire, these animals drove the structure of the renosterveld ecosystem and the constantly changing ratios of shrubs to grasses.
