Living Land

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Injudicious ploughing of slopes and bottomlands in ways

that contributed to excessive run-off and soil erosion

removed thousands of tons of topsoil from relatively small

areas. Once it had lost productivity, the land was abandoned

and erosion carried on unchecked.

In 2008 the Avontuur property was purchased by the

World Wide Fund for Nature to conserve its unique biodi-

versity. The property is home to more than 500 plant

species, of which 34 are species of conservation concern

and eight are not conserved anywhere else. Since 2009 the

property has been leased to and managed by not-for-profit

company Avontuur Sustainable Agriculture, which manages

the property as a living landscape that is both productive

yet conserved. The approach has been to restore the hydro-

logical and ecological systems, particularly on the degraded

lands; actively rehabilitate the most degraded areas; facilitate

the gradual restoration of the indigenous flora on the old

lands and enable the farm to produce sustainably.

Independent researchers identified the causes and extent

of the degradation of the property, and recommended

actions that could be taken to rectify the situation. On the

basis of this a five-year programme of low-cost, replicable

rehabilitation has been undertaken on the property.

More than 90 per cent of the land surface of the property

is now stable and well conserved, and earthworm popula-

tions have rebounded on old plough lands. Nevertheless,

some areas have been deeply scarred by injudicious land

use, with erosion gullies up to 3 metres deep. The princi-

ples followed in restoring the land have been to keep as

much rainwater as possible in the landscape (preferably in

the soil), disperse and weaken the impact of raindrops and

run-off water, establish or retain vegetative cover, create

favourable conditions for earthworms and soil organisms,

prevent the loss of topsoil by water and wind erosion and

use ground cover to protect the soil and create favourable

conditions for the germination of seed.

The approach has been to provide opportunities for vegeta-

tion to re-establish in degraded areas. Run-off water has been

filtered so as to retain soil, seed and organic matter, and seed

collected on the property has been reintroduced to bare areas.

The unique nature of the soil/climate/vegetation nexus

on Avontuur is such that it was necessary to innovate and

Image: N Oettlé

Hartwig Oktober demonstrates how a contour bund spreads the run-off water from rocky cliffs adjoining his rooibos lands

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