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.
Overberg Renosterveld Trust honoured with WWF living planet award
The Overberg Renosterveld Trust (ORT) has been named the organisational winner of the 2025 WWF Living Planet Award – one of the highest honours in South African conservation.
A new renosterveld obsession, almost too small to see
What began as curiosity has become a full-blown passion: to seek out, photograph and identify the miniature marvels that make up the hidden life of renosterveld.







