On the 7th of March a group of Groen Sebenza Pioneers from seven different environmental organisations in KwaZulu-Natal, got together to launch a Provincial River Health Day at uMngeni Valley Nature Reserve.
The large-scale programme ‘Groen Sebenza’ or ‘Green Work’ is being led by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) as nominated by the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). The project is funded by National Treasury as part of the Jobs Fund Programme. Groen Sebenza is aimed at developing priority skills in the biodiversity sector to create sustainable job opportunities for 800 unemployed graduates and matriculants country wide.
The day’s main purpose, as laid out by the event organisers “GroundTruth” in partnership with Wildlands Conservation Trust and Wildlife Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA), was for all participants to re-connect with our natural resources, i.e. water, through a miniSASS workshop. This was also a way for the organisations to highlight the importance of water as we approached National Water Week commemorated from the 17 – 23 March 2014 under the theme “Water is Life – 20 years of Water Delivery for Social and Economic Development.”
MiniSASS, Mini Stream Assessment Scoring System, is a simple tool developed by GroundTruth in conjunction with WESSA which can be used by anyone to monitor the health of a river. A sample of macro-invertebrates are collected from the river, and depending on which groups are found, one can measure the general river health and water quality.
Pioneers from different organisations namely; Wildlands Conservation Trust, Dusi uMngeni Conservation Trust (DUCT), Department of Environmental Affairs Working for Water, World Wide Fund (WWF), GroundTruth, WESSA and special guests consisting of honours students from UKZN – exchanged ideas on the importance of river health before heading down for a river walk and miniSASS exercise. After which they shared findings and scores of their respective portions of the river.
Lindokuhle Hlongwane, Communications Officer at Wildlands Conservation Trust said he found the miniSASS exercise very informative – “Having not studied conservation, I enjoy attending these sorts of workshops because it opens my eyes to new, interesting and exciting things in the environmental field.”
“MiniSASS is such a simple, yet very interesting method to use in testing water quality,” said Ashleigh van Wyk, an Environmental Science Honours student at UKZN. “By seeing all the bugs that I never considered live in the water, let alone provide me with valuable information about the status of that water; made me re-evaluate my role in contributing to low quality water and what changes I could make in saving and looking after water,” comments Ashleigh.
“The river day was resourceful for me because I learnt about taking action for the sake of our rivers,” said Kholosa Magudu, Water Health Specialist from Dusi uMngeni Conservation Trust. “I also think it was amazing for organisations to get together and make commitments towards saving water and respecting rivers. This was a great time to network with colleagues from various organisations,” concludes Kholosa Magudu.
For more information please visit www.minisass.org or send an email toinfo@minisass.org
WILDTRUST (registered as the Wildlands Conservation Trust - IT No: 4329/1991/PMB)