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Sue advocates a holistic approach to safeguarding our planet
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may be small in stature but she packs a powerful punch.
Not only is she a qualified ranger officer who knows how to wield a weapon, get a 4 x 4 out of swampy conditions and deal with dangerous game situations, but she has also earned the nickname “Jack Russel” at times when she dug in her heels over environmental concerns. Having inherited two ex-poachers as part of her monitoring team, she successfully worked with them to enhance their skills and techniques, in the process inspiring them to become dedicated Field Technicians that collect valuable data. They are helping to document the success of conservation initiatives in Ikorongo Grumeti Reserves, two game reserves forming part of the Serengeti.
In view of her tenacity, experience and expertise Sue seems to be tailor-made for her new position at SAEON. South Africa’s grasslands, wetlands and pockets of forests are dwindling, with significant impacts on biodiversity and the continued delivery of essential ecosystem services. It is crucial for these biomes to be carefully observed and monitored over an extended period.
These challenges make Sue all the more determined to get the node started and fully operational. Although her primary experience has been in savannas, she is looking forward to her new responsibilities and the “ecological challenge” of working with grasslands, wetlands and forests.
“What excites me is that these are biomes that are critical for key ecosystem services such as clean air and clean water,” Sue says. “The question is - how will something like global change impact economically on the country and on people’s livelihoods?”
Quality of life
She has fully bought into SAEON’s vision of “delivering long-term reliable data for scientific research and informing decision-making for a knowledge society and improved quality of life”. A definite drawcard for her has been that the work the node will be doing in these biomes has direct implications for understanding the quality of life before the potential impacts of climate change become evident.
Sue says that she has been aware of SAEON almost from its inception and watched the organisation with interest because its core values has always appealed to her. With a twinkle in the eye she confesses that she had been eyeing this specific position for some time, but when it was finally advertised she was working in the remote Tanzanian bush. Fortunately her friends alerted her to the advertisement and she immediately applied for the position.
While it presented something of a challenge for her to move out of the remote Serengeti National Park to Pietermaritzburg, she enjoys her new environment. “Our offices are in Queen Elizabeth Park, a beautiful valley,” she smiles.
SAEON’s three pillars
Sue is well versed in all three pillars upon which SAEON’s mandate is based – observation science, information management and environmental education outreach.
She initially enrolled for a BSc majoring in Zoology and Environmental and Geographical Sciences at the University of Cape Town. Within the first six months she found herself falling in love with Botany and developing a passion for understanding ecosystems, to such an extent that she dropped Zoology completely, changed her major to Botany and ended up doing a BSc in Ecology.
From there she completed her Honours degree and went on to do a Masters, which exposed her to the whole country from an ecological perspective, which she thoroughly enjoyed. From there she worked for Prof William Bond as a Field Technician on the Zululand Grassland Programme in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park. After gaining this experience she successfully applied for the Regional Ecologist South Zululand position in Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife based in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park.
It was in this park that she gained experience in long-term observational and experimental work as well as the design of a diversity of research programmes. The park hosts an active research centre where an array of cutting-edge research and conservation questions have been answered. She counts herself fortunate to have worked with a multiplicity of very competent people in an array of different projects as she learnt a lot in the process.
“I worked for Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife for several years, so I’m familiar with the host organisation of the node and I think that gives me something of an advantage,” says Sue.
In Tanzania she found long-term monitoring programmes “quite a challenge” – to a large extent because her team for monitoring were actually two ex-poachers from rural areas, one of them a notorious rhino and elephant poacher. She had to reshape the programmes to make sure they yielded useful information.
Building capacity in environmental science
Environmental education outreach is one of Sue’s passions. She says it all began when KZN Wildlife started looking for ecologists of a high calibre - who are interested and passionate about the environment - from a spread across the diversity of our country. “There was an absolute void of people from certain groups – they just weren’t available,” she explains. In an attempt to understand the mechanisms and drivers involved, she started working with some of the universities from previously disadvantaged backgrounds to expose the young BSc students to careers in conservation, research or ecological science, and instill a passion for the environment in these students.
“I think the challenge is to ensure that students who are interested and passionate about the environment pursue careers in environmental science that are financially viable for them,” Sue argues. “It’s not just about imparting knowledge; its about creating and promoting passion in people so that they choose this as a career.”
In addition, Sue - through KZN Wildlife - ran some volunteer research programmes in collaboration with the Earthwatch Institute, where volunteers actually paid for the privilege of doing research work in South Africa. Earthwatch also runs an African fellowship programme which brings scientists from around Africa together to interact with each other and to learn new techniques on these Earthwatch programmes. Sue always made sure her programme received one group of African fellows and also nominated her staff to attend other projects on the continent in a bid to promote learning in research in Africa. During her subsequent work in Tanzania she came across students who’d been through her project and found it very encouraging to see how they had developed through their experiences and, as a result, in their career.
In Tanzania Sue got involved in setting up an environmental education centre and while it wasn’t part of her brief, she became involved in developing the curriculum, interacting with the children, encouraging them and attending their ceremonies. She found it a remarkable experience to see how these children benefited from the centre’s competent and passionate educator. These were children from rural areas that had very little access to any form of technology, so the education was basic, but Sue and the educator made sure it was locally relevant. The children were encouraged to identify the environmental problems in the area and come up with solutions.
Sue is looking forward to implementing some of her many ideas for education outreach programmes. Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife has some excellent school programmes running, with the main focus on conservation and environmental education. Sue will make use of this platform to investigate ways of inserting long-term science monitoring into the programme, encouraging learners to look at their natural world, measuring what’s going on in it and hopefully gaining a better understanding of its dynamics. “And that’s just one avenue,” she smiles.
First steps
Sue already has a short-term plan in place for setting up the node. The first step would be to gain an understanding of the research and monitoring programmes already in place in the biomes, clarify institutional responsibilities, and identify any gaps where would it be appropriate for the node to step in. “We obviously don’t want to duplicate what’s already being done, so we will have to determine whether and how we can build on and enhance existing programmes,” Sue explains.
She will be consulting all the key players in the area, which include Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Cedara Agricultural College and the departments of Environmental Affairs and Agriculture. “It is going to be critical for me to build up a good relationship with these players,” she adds.
KZN Wildlife has very strong scientific programmes and data bases in place so she sees herself working very closely with them, while the two government departments and Cedara have extensive monitoring capacity. Her challenge would be to make sure the node involves as many experts and individuals as possible from all three ecosystem types.
Following these consultations, she'll work under the guidance of Prof Tim O'Connor, SAEON's Observation Science Specialist to develop programmes within the node's brief of long-term monitoring with those organisations and scientists who are interested and keen. "This will provide us the information that could be used by generations to come to enhance and improve quality of life for South Africans.” she says. “It’s going to be fun,” she adds with a twinkle in her eye.
Brokering partnerships
Sue strongly advocates partnerships and joint projects in research. “When you work as an individual you can become quite blinkered,” she says. “If you have ten people working individually and not sharing data you get one set of results, but if they start working together then you start seeing the connections, the drivers and the bigger picture.” She finds that exciting from a science point of view. She has also found that a cohesive approach gives science more credibility, and managers are more inclined to listen when scientists speak with a coherent voice.
As a student working in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park she was “incredibly lucky” to have been exposed to Dr Dave Balfour who was running the research centre at the time. He made it his mission to bring people from different disciplines and projects together to work collaboratively. This exposed Sue to a multiplicity of people and groups from different backgrounds ranging from international and local botanists to eco-physiologists. It also gave Sue an opportunity to witness first-hand how much more valuable a collaborative approach is in terms of expanding the knowledge base. (Dr Dave Balfour subsequently - in 2005 - became the first Manager of SAEON’s Ndlovu Node.)
Alien plant control
When Sue initially started working for KZN Wildlife an alien plant clearing programme had just started in the Hluhluwe -Imfolozi Park to address probably the biggest threat in the park at that time – Chromolaena odorata, which had invaded about 30 000 hectares out of the park's 89 000 hectares. She was appointed on the steering committee and became a very active member, which led to her becoming known as a bit of a “Jack Russel”.
“It was a bumpy ride to get the powers that be (who’ve had little to do with and don't always understand the critical issues and principles) on board,” Sue admits. Stop-start funding from government also had to be addressed. Once the steering committee had the systems in place the project quickly began to show results. Nine years down the line all the initial clearing has been done and the park is now focusing on follow up.
When she spotted Chromolaena in Tanzania soon after her arrival she was horrified, but fortunately it was just a small infestation of the West African form, so she immediately alerted the officials in charge. A year later she found Parthenium (demoina weed), a noxious weed threatening food security in Africa. On top of that, in the protected area they were working in there were extensive infestations of Opuntia (prickly pear).
To tackle the Opuntia problem, Sue was tasked with starting up an alien plant control programme, a daunting task in view of the general lack of awareness. They first had to get permission to use herbicides within a protected area. After that it was a case of educating the relevant people. She organised two weeks of intensive training for the government institutions they were working with. Delegates had to write an exam to qualify. In addition, given her discovery of Chromolaena and Parthenium which hadn't been recorded in Tanzania before and the potential threat these two species pose to the region, Sue gave educational presentations wherever and whenever she could and she finally succeeded in getting the right people to take the project on board and drive it via government both at local and national levels.
The Serengeti
Sue admits she jumped at the opportunity to work in the Serengeti three years ago. In South Africa ecologists work with systems that have through default become quite isolated, fenced, closed systems, so from an ecological point of view, working in what is supposedly open systems that are self regulating and ecologically intact, presents a wonderful opportunity. It also gives rise to all kinds of questions such as how do those systems function and what are the differences? What can we learn from each other?”
Yet soon after Sue arrived there she realised that those open systems are actually in trouble - the boundaries are being encroached, corridors are being blocked up and it’s only a matter of time before they go the same way as South Africa. Sue subsequently arranged a workshop to bring a number of East African and Southern African scientists together to discuss the issue. The meeting was very successful. There was acknowledgement that the open, self-regulating systems in Tanzania are under threat. Delegates subsequently reviewed what has gone wrong in South Africa and what Tanzania could learn from these mistakes to try and prevent the Serengeti going the same way before it’s too late.
“It would be tragic to lose one of the last migrations in the world,” Sue concludes.
