WESSA Annual Review 2022

MEMBERSHIP

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On Saturday 17 September 2022, close on 900 volunteers took to all of Nelson Mandela Bay’s beaches on International Coastal Clean-up Day and collected some 1 200 bags of human waste, 22 tonnes of plastic and other trash from our shores.

These opportunities of doing something meaningful and being part of, not separate from, nature is the lifeblood of WESSA volunteerism. All around the country, we have branches, organised into five regions, doing similar things.

Aiding local conservancy and Friends-of efforts

Our land and ocean ecosystems and biomes vary greatly, but each bunch of volunteers organised under the banner of WESSA membership dedicate hours and hours of their time to getting out there and doing their bit. And we’re not only busy with clean-ups, WESSA volunteers are working across a range of activities which include: Doing advocacy work that extends from inputting into (and often challenging) local development environmental assessments (EIA’s), to input into national government policies like those on climate change and biodiversity stewardship to participating in national protests such as the recent ones against Shell’s seismic misadventures off the Wild Coast Organising educational events that take kids out into their local wilds and help them see their place in things, or talks and guided walks by experts that build local citizen’s knowledge about the planet and their immediate environment

Driving local specie or habitat rehabilitation and re-wilding programmes and projects Coordinating weekend clean-ups and alien hacks along our coastlines, in our river catchments, and local dams Getting citizen-science projects up and running that measure and test and documenting our biodiversity health and help inform decision makers on how best to meet local challenges

Producing publications like our regular African Wildlife & Environment Issue, or local guidebooks focused on local species or habitats.