‌‌A new community learning partnership with Assegaai Trails for sustainable land management 

Staff from the Department of Environmental Science (DES) recently paid a follow-up visit to Assegaai Trails to continue conversations with landowners Sheila and Ray Riddin about a new community learning partnership. The teaching staff at DES are in the process of re-designing a 3rd year Environmental Science practical which forms part of the ENV301 Course on "Environmental Management Concepts and Methods". The practical is based on a field trip which has historically taken place at various sites around Makhanda. The practical focuses on teaching students the basics of field-based research methods to inform environmental management. In alignment with its commitment to community-engaged research and teaching, and to teaching and learning that aligns with a social-ecological-systems framing, the department felt it was time to redesign the practical.

We are now going to run the practical at Assegaai Trails as part of a long-term community learning partnership. Assegai Trails is one of the many ecotourism and game farms that have become prominent in the landscapes surrounding Makhanda. It's important for the DES to build partnerships with owners and managers of local landscapes given our interest in sustainable landscape management and use of natural resources. This can ensure that the teaching and research activities of the department are based on real-life, contextually relevant environmental management challenges and questions faced by members of the communities in which the university is situated. 

Our initial conversations and planning with the team at Assegaai Trails revealed that they are concerned about the spread of a plant called Biterbos (Chrysocoma ciliata) which is negatively impacting their grazing land. There is a need to better understand how and why this species is expanding on the farm (and possibly also on other farms in the area) in order to inform more effective and sustainable management of the land. This could form part of a long-term adaptive management approach to dealing this this particular challenge. 

The focus of the newly designed ENV301 practical is therefore going to be on this plant species. Students will conduct ecological and social research to investigate the species and its spread. We aim to do this repeatedly over the next few years with every new cohort of ENV301 student to build a longitudinal data set and working relationship with Assegaai Trails. This will enable us to learn together how to better manage Biterbos in the context of sustainable land management for ecotourism. In this way the practical is no lo longer "just" a teaching exercise where a local site is used as a field site for learning, but it becomes a collaborative and potentially transdisciplinary learning process through which students build a more integrated and engaged understanding of environmental management concepts and methods embedded in a long-term research and teaching partnership. 

We would like to extend our thanks to Sheila and Ray Riddin at Assegaai Trails for welcoming this idea and working with us. We look forward to a productive partnership and impactful knowledge exchanges over the next few years as we work together to make sense of how best to manage this sustainability challenge on the university's doorstep. 

Last Modified: Thu, 29 Feb 2024 16:56:00 SAST