Wildlands Conservation Trust (a leading environmental NPO) Ubuntu Earth Ambassador Nokuthula Mdletshe, together with Mbuso Khambula (Trainee Graduate Ecology) at Richards Bay Minerals, embarked on a ‘River Health’ campaign in primary schools around four communities – namely Sokhulu, Mbonambi, Dube and Mkhwanazi, in March this year.
Their initiative forms part of celebrating ‘National Water week’ (17 March – 23 March) which encourages people to look after this scarce resource.
“We have identified the need to educate school kids on how to assess the health status of their streams by using the miniSASS test,” said Ubuntu Earth Ambassador, Nokuthula Mdletshe.
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.
The Wildlands Conservation Trust run an Ubuntu Earth Ambassador project, an initiative sponsored by Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), which works hand in hand with communities nurturing freshwater conservation and custodianship, Nokuthula Mdletshe is a part of this project.
“This campaign is part of a long term goal of motivating community members to adopt these sustainable ways of living,” said Mdletshe. “We also hope to plant the seed of love for the environment and help people aspire for careers in the environmental field.”
“We visited 9 primary schools around these communities for this campaign,” said Mbuso Khambula. “The activities started by teaching them the importance of saving water and the importance of small insects living in water. Then we took them to the nearest stream to conduct the miniSASS tests with them,” said Khambula.
The miniSASS system uses the composition of macro invertebrates (small animals) living in rivers and is based on the sensitivity of these animals to water quality. Children go to the river and use a net to collect the invertebrates; this is done by disturbing the water and rocks then sifting with a net. The small animals are then transferred to the holding container. The animals collected are then identified using the identification key and magnifying glass. A sensitivity score is then calculated and the quality of water is estimated in a four pint scale of natural, fair, poor or very poor. “We took 30 kids per school from grade five to grade seven, said Mdletshe.
“After scoring the stream we give the children the chance to come up with some ideas on what should be done to improve the health of their stream, by doing so we want them to feel a sense of ownership for that stream so that they will look after it long after the campaign has ended,” concluded Mdletshe.
WILDTRUST (registered as the Wildlands Conservation Trust - IT No: 4329/1991/PMB)