Wanted: citizen scientists
CONSERVATION is more than recycling, planting trees or science – every individual across the country can contribute to nurturing the planet that gives us life.
In the run-up to the Conservation Symposium 2022 in Scottburgh, of local and international leaders on environmental challenges, some of the experts involved highlighted the main issues they faced and offered advice on how public “citizen scientists” could contribute.
Event organiser Freyni du Toit said this year’s Conservation Symposium, to be held on the KZN South Coast for the first time, would bring together a wealth of expertise across the conservation sector, locally and globally.
“Valuable research, ground-breaking insights, best practice and impactful solutions will be shared by leaders in various fields of conservation. This event is coming at an important time, with the effects of the climate crisis now immediately evident across the globe. It’s up to all of us to learn what we can do and start implementing measures that will affect real change, starting with attending the symposium, either in person or online.”
A favourite contribution to addressing carbon emissions is planting a tree, but that sometimes creates a new problem.
Professor Guy Midgley, of the School for Climate Studies at Stellenbosch University, will speak about biodiversity and climate change.
“Of course we’re worried about the effects of climate change – but we’re also extremely concerned about the potential effects and what appear to be emerging and ongoing effects of various responses to climate change that attempt to use natural ecosystems to soak up CO² out of the atmosphere.
“Among these is the afforestation of grasslands and savannah systems that are not naturally high in tree cover, particularly by non-endemic tree species. There are many analyses that show that such responses at a global scale do not make a major contribution to global mitigation. They have potentially dire impacts on local livelihoods, ecosystem services and stability with risk from fire, reduction of water supply and the collapse of grazing systems that have been in place for centuries.
“This threatens to alter the landscape structure of vast areas of southern Africa which are currently open ecosystems that support biodiversity.
“Planting a tree anywhere is not the best solution to climate change. In southern Africa and the southern hemisphere where wildfire is an important ecosystem service, there are areas where there’s enough rainfall to support afforestation. But in most cases it is a very, very bad idea. People mustn’t assume that planting trees is the best solution to climate change.”
Motorists, from private vehicles to truckers, can help by using a new app, Roadwatch, to send data to researchers studying which animals are killed by vehicles on our roads.
Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Wendy Collinson-Jonker of the wildlife and transport programme said citizen scientists – in particular truckers and other transport or delivery drivers – were vital to understanding “roadkill”.
“We need help with gathering roadkill data from across the country. People can get involved in doing this as citizen scientists, so we can understand what’s going on, the different species in different areas. Because of citizen scientist efforts, we’ve noticed that serval are quite vulnerable on some sections of the N3 highway and bat-eared foxes are vulnerable towards the Kalahari. People can download the app Roadwatch to report sightings.”
Blood Lions NPO campaign co-ordinator Cath Jakins will highlight problems with SA’s unregulated commercial captive predator industry.
“The lack of regulation and enforcement of the captive breeding industry in South Africa leads to the creation and exploitation of legal loopholes, and the unregulated growth of the industry.
“Our research has revealed major issues surrounding the use, reuse and misuse of microchip numbers on captive lions in particular which has the potential to lead to laundering of wild-caught lions and unregistered captive lions through the system. Not only does this impact on the conservation of wild predators in SA, it has also negatively affected South Africa’s conservation reputation around the world,” she said.
“People can help by not supporting the exploitation of our wildlife in captivity. The captive breeding of lions does not contribute to conservation but is doing irreparable damage to South Africa. We recommend that the public support true conservation and tourism supporting wildlife in the wild in our many beautiful game reserves.”
Cecilia Cerrilla is researching the threat of alien fish to freshwater species in diminishing river systems.
“The alien fish tend to take out the juveniles of the larger fish in the systems and they also eat the smaller fish. That’s a huge problem. The other one is declining flows due to a variety of reasons such as water abstraction for agriculture, thirsty alien plants taking up a lot of water from the rivers, and climate change,” she said.
“What people could do to help is not to introduce alien species to catchments where they don’t exist.”
She also encouraged people to support organisations clearing river habitats.
Dr Reece Alberts, from the environmental management department at North-West University, will speak about the Aliwal Shoal case study on what tourism-related behaviour and waste means in marine protected areas.
“The biggest challenge is contradictory and incoherent policy direction as well as a lack of agreement on what conservation and protected areas mean, how it is understood, and what conservation and protected areas should deliver in future,” he said.
People need to get involved in policy processes to deliver clear, coherent policy direction, and consensus around what our society expects from conservation and protected areas.
Onkemetse Nteta, of the SADC Trans-frontier Conservation Areas (TFCA) and International Union for Conservation of Nature, said:
“We have similar challenges to other areas of conservation that deal with national parks, nature reserves and stewardship, but we need financing to scale up the work to address the biodiversity crisis. We send the funding to various countries that have TFCAs to improve the management effectiveness of our protected areas and avoid ‘paper parks’ – once you declare an area protected, there is still a lot of work to be done to manage it to secure the biodiversity.”
Capacity and different policies across borders are also challenging.
“For example, with tourism we try to promote cross-border tourism but that needs policy that works across the regions. There’s also inadequate joint management of ecosystems, so with habitats and species crossing boundaries, we need countries to work together. Illicit wildlife trade, poaching and human-wildlife conflict are some other challenges.”
Nteta appealed to people to support conservation NGOs.
The Conservation Symposium will be held at Scottburgh from October 31 to November 5, hosted by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife in partnership with the University of KwaZulu-Natal, WildOceans, WildTrust, Endangered Wildlife Trust, CapeNature, Nature Environment and Wildlife Filmmakers and the Environmental Law Association. Virtual attendance is free, but registration is necessary. Registration closes on October 25, for virtual and live attendees.
To find out more, see www.conservationsymposium.com.
Tickets are available at https:// conservationsym2022.dryfta. com/16274620761/calendar/register-to-attend. To book, visit https:// conservationsym2022.dryfta. com/16274620761/accommodation.
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