At the end of January, a contingent of TC staff and partners traveled to South Africa to reconnect with our Southern Africa Tortoise Conservation Trust (SATCT) staff and partners. After 3 years of zoom, this was the first time since the beginning of the pandemic that US-based conservationists were able to visit our Geometric Tortoise preserve. In addition to having our first in-person SATCT Trustee meeting since 2019, we held meetings with CapeNature, the environmental conservation government agency for the Western Cape. We also consulted and engaged with NGO colleagues and local scientists on future management plans and actions, and visited the tortoise headstarting facility at Elandsberg Nature Reserve (managed by our partners, the Mapula Trust).
Preserve manager Alwyn Naude, Jr., showed us the progress that he and our Guardian team have achieved with invasive plant clearing over the past year. The most recent expansion on the north end of our preserve is now completely free of mature Port Jackson Acacia trees. But the work doesn’t stop there—Port Jackson Acacia is an aggressive colonizer and seedlings and saplings must be removed biannually. The preserve team has also been working hard to maintain fire breaks and repair fencing. As the size of our preserve increases, so does the amount of work and planning it takes to conserve geometric tortoises in perpetuity.
