News

Fortunately for Avontuur and out neighbour, an injection of emergency funding from WWF has enabled us to clear the firebreak on the southern boundary of Avontuur, which runs along our boundary with Grasberg from the banks of the Grasberg River all the way to Kromvlei, close to the escarpment and on the Western Cape Provincial boundary. This will make any fire control that may be necessary in the future both easier and safer for the firefighters. 

The project has been carried out in association with Indigo development & change. Avontuur is a proudly paid-up member of the Namakwa Fire Protection Association.

On 27 January 2025 the Northern Cape Government gazetted the declaration of the Avontuur Nature Reserve. This was the outcome of many years’ worth of hard work and persistence on the part of WWF, Avontuur Sustainable Agriculture and the Northern Cape Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs, Rural Development and Land Reform, and we would like to thank all of our partners for this great achievement. Legal status as a nature reserve means that the biodiversity treasures of Avontuur can be preserved in perpetuity for future generations. For more, go to https://www.wwf.org.za/our_news/news/?52442/WWF-Bokkeveld-property-gets-long-awaited-protected-status

This short movie celebrates the achievements of interventions on Avontuur to restore areas of soil erosion on Avontuur. Rapid erosion of soils probably started in the late 1700’s, when Swedish naturalist Anders Sparrman visited the area and observed that the colonists “turned their cattle out constantly into the same fields in a much greater quantity than used to graze there” when the Khoi pastoralists used this veld. He observed that “in consequence of the fields thus being continually grazed off and the great increase of the cattle feeding on them the grasses and herbs which these animals most covet are prevented continually and more and more from thriving and taking root”. Old erosion scars, with the bare subsoil often covered in lichens, probably date to this era. 

Following the Second World War, high grain prices stimulated a boom in wheat production and was probably the indirect cause of the second great era of erosion of Avontuur, caused by unwise ploughing of vulnerable soils. An estimated 30,000 tons of soil was washed away from one small catchment.

With support of WWF, in January this year a local team under the leadership of DustinLee Gous renovated the erosion control structures on Avontuur to prepare them for the next rains. Current and predicted changes in the climate indicate that we must prepare for more extreme weather events, including deluges of rain. Our thanks to WWF for making this possible! 

Avontuur Nature Reserve needs some sheep to ensure we manage the biodiversity well, maintaining a sustainable and special place on the Bokkeveld Plateau in South Africa.

We also need local guardians to monitor biodiversity and maintain the fragile balance of the ecosystem in a changing climate. And of course we need social justice to make it work.

You can be part of this!

Now open to the public

Thursday – Sunday  11-17.00

Permits R100 per person for a day pass

Available at the Nieuwoudtville Publicity Association