Professor Fred Ellery, President of the South African Chapter of the International Mire Conservation Group (IMCG), has been elected as an honorary lifelong member in recognition of his contributions in research, teaching and wetland conservation efforts during his career. This honour was conferred on Fred Ellery at the General Assembly of the IMCG in Goni?dz, Poland, where support for his election was unanimous.
Prof Ellery has devoted his working life to understanding wetlands in southern Africa. Mires are a special category of wetland where peat makes up the predominant sedimentary fill. These systems are particularly intriguing in a tropical and subtropical context because the organic matter should decompose given high temperatures that typify our region. The most spectacular peatlands in South Africa occur on the coastal plain of KwaZulu-Natal and the southern Cape, where the oldest known peatland in the world, the Mfabeni Mire, is located.
In receiving this award, Prof Ellery paid tribute to the small but active group that makes up the South African Chapter of the IMCG: “The honour of my election is something that I share with colleagues in the South African Chapter of the IMCG, because of their dedication and hard work in changing the way that we think about, engage with, and treat, these remarkable ecosystems.”
He pointed out that the chapter fights tirelessly to promote the wise use and management of mires, because in a rapidly transforming developing country like South Africa, mires are amongst the first natural features to disappear – especially in a region where water scarcity is a daily reality for many. The destruction of individual mires may provide some local benefits in the short-term, but the negative impacts on downstream users of water resources far outweighs local benefits.
Prof Ellery’s work has increasingly focussed on mires that are linked to coastal floodplains and lakes. In settings where floodplains are aggradational, mires constitute a potentially important carbon sink.
Given the reality of global warming and the urgent need to address this global problem, he has recognised the importance of mire conservation. The peatlands of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, have also been the subject of ongoing work for him, and together with many colleagues, important principles for the sustainable management of this ecosystem have been developed.
There are ongoing questions that are being addressed, and through the new generation of young scientists that is emerging, his hope is to develop the kind of understanding that ensures effective use and management of mires in southern Africa and Africa more generally.