Ecosystems Management


  Nature conservation starts at your own front door
   ecosys
Wetland rehabilitation at the Brettenwood Coastal Estate as per EIA 4797, and the resulting ROD and EMP

Starting during the early autumn of 2009 under my close guidance and supervision the management and staff of Brettenwood Coastal Estate have been doing ongoing and very effective wetland rehabilitation of this site at Salt Rock on the KwaZulu-Natal coast north of Durban.  To date the results have been quite impressiveand and under my continued guidance should continue to be so.
Brettenwood wetland drainage
This is the area that we are dealing with in particular the section on the right when it was still planted to sugar cane before the start of development. As you can see there
is a well defined herring bone drainage system with a very deep central drainage ditch that has been dug to lower the water table in the wetland area so as to allow the growing of sugar cane
Brettenwood drainage 2
This is how the wetland looked in 2007 after the cane had been removed, looking from the top end of the wetland downhill towards the still intact swamp forest on the adjoining property. In this photo you can very clearly see the deep central drainage ditch and the completely dried out wetland basin.

bretttenwood wetland rehabilitation 1
What you can see here is one of the herring bone side drainage ditches


Brettenwood wetland rehabilitation 2
What  you can see here is a small section of the central drainage ditch which has been partially closed and has collected a little water

Brwttwnwood wetland rehabilitation 3
Here you can see the first of two locations where the central drainage ditch has been filled in to bring the water table up to the original level before the herring bone drainage was installed to drain the wetland so as to enable the growing of sugar cane.

Brettenqood wetland rehabilitation 4
Here you can see the second of two locations where the central drainage ditch has been filled in to bring the water table up to the original level before the herring bone drainage was installed to drain the wetland so as to enable the growing of sugar cane.

Brettenwood wetland rehabilitation 5
The results are very clear to be seen from this photograph, it can be clearly seen that the water table in the entire wetland basin is back to where it was before drainage measures were taken so as to enable the growing of sugar cane

Brettenwood wetland rehabilitation 6
Here you can clearly see the small but steady flow of crystal clear water flowing past the second of the two plugs in the central drainage ditch into the lower section of the wetland and on into the swamp forest on the adjoining property. Trees that have already been planted in this lower portion of the wetland have already benefitted from the increase in the water table as well as the constant supply of water.
In no time at all vast numbers of wetland plant species have begun to re-colonised this wetland followed by vast numbers of of other forms of aquatic wildlife. The most obvious new species that are to be seen are the birds athough many such as the little bitterns do not go out of their way to make themselves seen.
This is an ongoing project so more information and photos will be added to this page as they become available