Strauss & co - WWF Art Auction

57 already knew best about how the river works. While legislation declared no crops to be planted within a 30-metre buffer from the river banks, this was something they already knew and adhered to. ‘ Die rivier byt (the river bites)!’ they said. Following his Master’s, Rodney worked for a freshwater environmental consultancy and one of his responsibilities was to manage a project that would investigate how a river bank’s profile would change after alien river clearing, especially in the case of a flood. Much like the flow of a river, Rodney’s career has followed a fascinating mix of meandering and waterfall moments, water always having had a very strong presence in his life. While he hasn’t always worked in the freshwater space withinWWF, Rodney has worked with the WWF team for nearly a decade. In 2008, Rodney was instrumental in implementing a two-year pilot project, funded by SAB. By 2010, monitoring and evaluation of the pilot areas of the Cape Liesbeek catchment around Newlands and the Kouga catchment in the Eastern Cape (which produces 40% of Port Elizabeth’s water) showed great results and so the pilot became a long-term programme. The Water Balance Programme now prioritises several critical water catchments recognised in South Africa as the country’s ‘water factories’: the Berg/Breede River areas (which supply Cape Town); the Garden Route (from George to Plettenberg Bay); the Umgeni, which supplies Durban and Pietermaritzburg; and the Grasslands, which supply Gauteng and north- central KwaZulu-Natal. Some of the positive impacts of the Water Balance Programme’s work can be seen in how land owners have been empowered to support efforts in alien clearing. Johan Klingenberg, a farmer in the Luneberg agricultural area of Mpumalanga, is one champion who has been fighting water- thirsty alien invasive vegetation on his land for years. Water Balance’s agreement with government’s Working for Water Programme has meant farmers like Johan have access to valuable resources (including free herbicide) for the clearing of alien invasives. ‘Seeing the passion of land owners and hearing about springs coming up that have been dry for years, as is the case with a landowner in the Luneburg area, is so exciting. It’s wonderful to realise that WWF can catalyse these interventions and make a deep, meaningful impact’, says Rodney. The aim of WWF’s Water Balance Programme is to link water users back to the true source of their water – nature. This encourages South African businesses to take ownership of the country’s common water challenge by going beyond reducing their own water demand to making an investment back into water provisioning systems. It also enables forward- thinking water users to become active water stewards, recognising their dependency on water and their responsibility to ensure its future supply. ‘We need to look at the whole ecosystem and not have an alien monoculture or a one-species river system as this is really bad for indigenous vegetation, not to mention the adverse impacts on our precious water resources,’ says Rodney softly but with a sense of urgency. With both his parents being avid mountaineers, Rodney grew up walking and exploring Table Mountain and the mountains in the Boland, seeing many rivers in their most natural and healthy state compared to alien- infested rivers where vegetation is water-thirsty and fast-growing with shallow root systems that cause soil erosion amongst other things. Rodney’s vision, aligned with the aims of WWF’s Freshwater Programme, is to rapidly expand the Water Balance programme to reach many more important water resource areas and to ensure a secure water future for all our kids so that they can experience the full glory of our mountains and the natural beauty of healthy rivers.