RA Environmental Services | Environmental Project

Project: Nuwejaars Special Management Area

The Nuwejaars Wetland Special Management Area (SMA) is an area in which 25 private landowners and local communities work together to collectively manage our land for conservation.

Through this unique conservation model, some 46,000 hectares of often critically endangered habitat is now protected on the Agulhas Plain - at the southernmost region of Africa. The primary goal of the Nuwejaars Wetland Special Management Area (SMA) is to protect - and use - the land included in the Special Management Area sustainably, according to triple bottom line principles. We aim to find the balance between environmental integrity, human wellbeing and economic efficiency within the area.

While biodiversity and wetland conservation is promoted, so too are sustainable farming practices. As such, farming and conservation work hand in hand. Endangered plants and animals are protected. At the same time, food security from farmland in the Nuwejaars Wetland Ecosystem is not threatened.

This collaboration between landowners and local communities is the first of its kind in South Africa. It required significant commitments from all landowners and communities involved. Read more

Project: Development of Performance-Based Management Plan of the Faunal Reserve of Lomako Yokokala; Democratic Republic of Congo

In the DRC poaching for bush meat is still prevalent. (Picture thanks to Henri Vosper of a poacher, smoking house and his product of smoked game meat and a crocodile)

I went into together with Clive Poultney and Rubens de Kock to assess needs to assist with the prevention of poaching, train field rangers and advise on infrastructure and equipment maintenance including the building of a field ranger outpost. The Lomako Yokokala faunal Reserve is in the middle of the Congo jungle, 17 hours up river by motorized dug-out canoe from the closest town. There were no building resources as we know them in South Africa available, so we had to teach the local staff how to build using the natural resources of the area, which were abundant. Hard woods from the forest, magnificent clay for In Situ walls, palm oil for water-proofing and hardening, and palm rope for tying it all together into more than comfortable buildings.

The contribution capacitated the field rangers to remain in the field in comfortable facilities for long periods of time to maintain
protected area integrety. Read More.

Project: Buchu Bush Camp

The concept of the Buchu bushcamp was instigated by the principle of peripheral development around protected areas. The principle of peripheral development states that the infrastructure necessary for tourism and general management in a conservation protected area should be located at or near the boundary, rather than in the interior. Infrastructure and the activities surrounding it, inevitably introduces a degree of disturbance to the natural environment, so the idea behind peripheral development is to limit such disturbance to the edges of protected areas and to maintain the interior of the conservation area in as pristine a state as possible. Apart from this, the protected area needs the active support of its neighbours to maintain its integrity and generate income through political acceptance and tourism. Read more