Ferncliffe appeals to residents to help rewild mistbelt forest

Midlands residents are being asked to don a pair of closed, comfortable shoes and long trousers and do their bit to help rewild the beautiful Ferncliffe Mistbelt forest on Sunday, March 22. Janine Stephen, co-founder of Ferncliffe Forest Wilding, said: “Every inch will now be dedicated to the wild things that should and could live here: bats and damselflies, bugs and bushbuck, and maybe, bushbabies… “It is time to turn Glengarriff farm back into indigenous forest!” Ferncliffe is the remnant of a biome that originally stretched over about 2 000 hectares on the fringes of Pietermaritzburg. It still contains an astonishing diversity of life, from large mammals like bushpig and caracal, to unusualmillipedes, amphibians, a carnivorous snail and the enormous, monkey-catching crowned eagle.

This is why it is so important to return even a fraction of this once cultivated land back to itsnatural state. The first-ever World Rewilding Day was launched to coincide with the start of the United Nations Decade of Ecosystem Restoration – to demonstrate that rewilding is central to achieving the important goals of this decade. “Rewilding offers hope for tackling the nature and climate emergencies, while delivering a cascade of benefits for people,” said Stephen. “It’s the large-scale restoration of nature until it can take care of itself again.”