Background
- Holding a BSc Honours degree in Biological Sciences and Environmental Management and MSc in Environmental Sciences.
- Natural scientist with interest in:
- conservation of remaining natural resources by driving development away from sensitive areas through awareness, consultancy and education
- unlocking natural capital in ways that are sustainable and comply with the international environmental standards
- restoration of already degraded ecosystems using root cause analysis, identification of leverage points and providing pragmatic solutions tailored for large scale purposes
- Seeking to provide cost effective scientific and engineered solutions and advice for best practise in overcoming global environmental problems
Current research
Environmental degradation occurs at a global scale, thus a need for scaling up restoration interventions if sustainable and environmental global goals are to be met. Following United Nations’s declaration for 2021-2030 to be the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, there is some urgency and emphasis on scaling up restoration. Scaling up requires provision of best practice restoration guidelines beforehand is key to improve the management of current and future restoration projects at a large scale. This project seeks to:
- Identify shortcuts , pragmatic solutions for scaling up active restoration (systematic review of global literature)
- Make the case by determining what it takes (input) to implement the identified solutions and their anticipated outcomes (Output) (Systematic review)
- To test the efficacy of scaling up active restoration in Cape Fynbos by circumventing fire as a natural process (in field experiment at Blaauwberg Nature reserve as a Case study)
- Support the scaling up intervention proposed in this study by ascertaining its cost effectiveness and large scale feasibility to promote pre-informed decision making
Seeds pre-treated with smoke from burning fynbos biomass
Left: Acacia saligna clearance operations.
Right: Pre sowing preparations and data collection (picture taken by Saffiyah)
Sowing Day (pictures taken by Sjirk)
