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“We are over the moon,” Ruper Barnard of Wild Restoration, a non-profit organisation focused on alien clearing, rewilding and biodiversity restoration in the Greyton mountains, told the Hermanus Times after winning a two-year grant from the European Outdoor Conservation Association (EOCA). (See “Rewilding Greyton mtns”, Hermanus Times, 25 October 2023).
Barnard was up on the mountain during a recent helihack (specialised hacking involving helicopters) when he received the news that Wild Restoration had won the EOCA grant. “It was just so fitting,” he said. “I was down a gorge, completely out of signal and away from everybody, cutting on my own. When I came back up to a ridge, I saw the email congratulating us on our win. The whole team of more than 40 people was there, so I posted the good news on our group.”
The grant will not only allow Wild Restoration to continue the work it is doing in a particular area on the mountain, but will also help with job creation. “More people from the community can now be involved,” said Barnard. “These will not be full-time jobs, but we can take a team of about four community members along on hacks. Not only will people be trained, but it will also create conservation awareness.”
He said there is huge awareness of the organisation’s project now, thanks to social media, radio and media coverage, and it is approached almost daily by people who heard about it and want to join.
Asked about the win, Michelle de Bruyn said: “We got regular updates of the voting and knew we were in the lead, but didn’t know how big the gap was. We’re really chuffed and can make that money go really far.”
Barnard said the aim is also to get kids involved. “There is a road at the back we can now use to take schoolkids up the mountain. We’ve some exciting projects in store. We’re very grateful to all our sponsors, and Greyton Village really came together to help with food and accommodation. We even had pizzas delivered up the mountain by helicopter after they went for a refuel.”
There are incredibly rare plants up on the mountain, species a botanist can join the next helihack and identify.
