Who are we helping by Restoring Ecosystems? On Biodiversity and Threatened Species.

Yes yes, we know it sounds obvious. It must be ourselves, right? You know, climate change will impact coastal towns and cities and make things difficult for farmers.

But no, we need to get in touch with our altruistic gene again. We can rather be doing ecosystem restoration for the tens of thousands of species that are struggling to survive with us humans as their neighbour.

By restoring the wilderness that is their home, we are helping them survive.

Some Stats on the state of Wildlife

The Living Planet Report 2022, reveals a 69% decline in global wildlife populations since 1970. It is leading to a breakdown in ecosystem services and resilience.

The Mammal Red List of South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland assesses the conservation status of our mammals. 57 (17%) species are deemed to be threatened with extinction, and 34 (10%) are Near Threatened.

Below you will find a list of the threatened mammal and bird species in our

ReWild Mpumalanga project area. In the following weeks we will share more on all of these very special species:

11 Mammal Species:

Brown Hyaena Parahyaena brunnea - Near Threatened

Serval Leptailurus serval - Near Threatened

Cape Clawless Otter Aonyx capensis - Near Threatened

African Wild Dog Lycaon pictus - Endangered

Temminck’s Ground Pangolin Smutsia temminckii - Vulnerable

Leopard Panthera pardus - Vulnerable

Samango Monkey Cercopithecus albogularis - Vulnerable

Natal Red Duiker Cephalophus natalensis - Near Threatened

Grey Rhebok Pelea capreolus - Near Threatened

Oribi Ourebia ourebi ourebi - Endangered

Mountain Reedbuck Redunca fulvorufula fulvorufula - Endangered

12 Bird Species: Regional, Global

Bush Blackcap Sylvia nigricapillus VU, VU

Kori Bustard Ardeotis kori NT, NT

Forest Buzzard Buteo trizonatus LC, NT

Blue Crane Grus paradisea NT, VU

Crowned Eagle Stephanoaetus coronatus VU, NT

Verreaux's Eagle Aquila verreauxii VU, LC

Half-collared Kingfisher Alcedo semitorquata NT, LC118

Secretarybird Sagittarius serpentarius VU, EN

Saddle-billed Stork Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis EN, LC

Blue Swallow Hirundo atrocaerulea CR, VU

Orange Ground Thrush Geokichla gurneyi NT, LC

Cape Vulture Gyps coprotheres EN, EN

EN Endangered

NT Near Threatened

CR Critically Endangered

VU Vulnerable

LC Least Concern

Mammal Red List SA 2016

Red Data Book of Birds of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland 2015

Serval: the long legged elusive cat

Serval Leptailurus serval - Near Threatened

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serval

By Bob - Picasa Web Albums, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12365626

The degradation of wetlands and grasslands is a major threat to the survival of the serval.

The serval is a slender, medium-sized cat; it stands 54 to 62 cm (21–24 in) at the shoulder and weighs 8 to 18 kg (18–40 lb), but females tend to be lighter.

By Profberger at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43085416

A solitary animal, there is little social interaction among servals except in the mating season, when pairs of opposite sexes may stay together. The only long-lasting bond appears to be of the mother and her cubs, which leave their mother only when they are a year old.[21]

Both males and females establish home ranges, and are most active only in certain regions ('core areas') within them. The area of these ranges can vary from 10 to 32 square kilometres (4 to 12 square miles); prey density, availability of cover and human interference could be significant factors in determining their size.

Aggressive encounters between individuals are rare, as servals appear to mutually avoid one another rather than fight and defend their ranges. On occasions where two adult servals meet in conflict over territory, a ritualistic display may ensue, in which one will place a paw on the other's chest while observing their rival closely; this interaction rarely escalates into a fight.

The serval is a carnivore that preys on rodents, particularly vlei rats, small birds, hares, frogs, insects, and reptiles, and also feeds on grass that can facilitate digestion or act as an emetic. Up to 90% of the preyed animals weigh less than 200 g (7.1 oz); occasionally it also hunts larger prey such as duikers, hares, flamingoes and young antelopes.[24] The percentage of rodents in the diet has been estimated at 80–97%.[34][38][39] Apart from vlei rats, other rodents recorded frequently in the diet include the African grass rat, African pygmy mouse and multimammate mice.

Newsletter #1

6 October, 2023

ReWild Mpumalanga

GeaSphere

Dear All

It is my privilege and pleasure to write you all this letter, in an effort to inform you regarding the progress of our GeaSphere ‘ReWild Mpumalanga’ project.

First, let me thank all of you for your support, without which this effort would be impossible.Your time, energy and financial contributions provides a glimmer of hope - making a daunting task of holistic habitat restoration a reality.

Warm gratitude to the ‘GeaSphere Tribe’ on Clubhouse, Bev, Zampe, XYZ, Lisa, Sandra, Nate and Niklas, for attending our regular committee meetings and helping to give life and direction to our project.

I am happy to report that we have now access to a team of 10 trainee ‘Field Rangers’, who will start actively working on the project in October. Though this team is on a part time basis (16 hours per week), it provides an opportunity to meaningfully engage with the growing problem of alien invasive plants, whilst providing ongoing training and skills development wrt restoration, plant identification, compost, biochars etc.

The project is in collaboration with the Mpumalanga Water Caucus (MPWC) and will be responsible for the employment of 50 people in land restoration, 40 will be active in the BushBuck Ridge area (approximately 70 km North north east of Sudwala). Ten rangers will be employed and active locally, in the Sudwala Rainforest Valley area.

The opportunity is being facilitated by ‘Project Biome’ - which is an American organization founded by Zach Bush (zachbushmd.com/about). Project Biome managed to obtain this funding opportunity via aAvoVision - with the funding being from the IDC Social Employment Fund.

This project is part of a much larger job creation initiative, and it is with gratitude to the MPWC (specially my friend and colleague December Ndhlovu), Project Biome and Avovision that we embark on this venture.

Though funding has been obtained for part time employment, we as yet don’t have any funds for operational support. We lack basic equipment, PPE, Uniforms, and basic tools. Significantly, we are in dire need of adequate transport to move our teams around. However, we are optimistic that we will manage to obtain additional support, and have reached out to several local corporations. These include timber giants Sappi and YORK Timbers, Toll Road operators TRAC-N4 and equipment and PPE suppliers TWK and Jonssons.

During the second week of October I will have the opportunity to meet with an organisation ‘Hummingbirds’ (hummingbirds.eu) who reached out to us with potential interest in supporting our land restoration efforts. They are specially interested in the carbon sequestration potential of the project, through reducing and reversing ‘forest landscape degradation’ and potentially the production of biochars.

Our website is up, with links to all our social media channels, which include Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Restore, iNaturalist and YouTube. We would appreciate it if you could take a look at the site and provide any feedback.

We are just about to reach our $3000 ‘Mini Pilot Project’ target, which would allow us to put a team of two people in the field - 5 days a week for 3 months. The aim is to identify and restore a particular area, carefully monitoring the efficacy of the intervention. The ‘Mini Pilot Project’ was conceived before we knew that we would have access to a team of 10 people two days a week, where we would also be carefully monitoring project progress. Thus we expect some ‘overlap’ in execution.

Though Clubhouse is struggling to recover its functionality after the recent major update, it remains a valuable tool to share and learn. Our regular Monday 7pm ‘Event’ has seen a reduced audience, but not as severe as has been observed in some other ‘Houses’. To me there is a clear link between the size of House membership and attendees, thus it remains important to build the house membership. At the moment, the GeaSphere House on Clubhouse has approximately 3350 members, and it is still growing daily.

We have also activated a PayPal account, and we thank those of you who tested and used it to make a gift. Some supporters prefer this method of donating, and it must be said that the platform makes international payment processing seemingly easy. There is an easy link which can be used to donate - even if you have no PayPal account.

Our Patrons on Patreon has also doubled in the last two months, thanks to those of you for your continued faith in GeaSphere, and great to see things starting to come together!

We retain faith in the utility NFT project, but recognise that we need to appeal to people in the crypto currency space, and that we would need to sharpen our ‘marketing’ of this innovative funding strategy. It is not easy to ‘onboard’ supporters who are new to NFT’s, but we are confident that the potential of this medium will grow and more people will adopt crypto currency for financial transactions.

The team from ‘Project Biome’ visited our area on Tuesday, 3 October. This was also the day that our team of ‘Field Rangers’ started with the Ecosystem Restoration work. Lacking adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for venturing into the wilderness, the team spent this day picking up litter from the side of the main road leading through the valley. This clean up action resulted in a full pick-up truck load of (mostly plastic) rubbish removed to the municipal landfill site.

The team from Project Biome is a wonderful group of people, warm hearts and positive attitudes. We look forward to a long lasting relationship with benefits to people and planet.

With Gratitude

Philip Owen

www.geasphere.org