African Wildlife & Environment Issue 85

CONSERVATION

View over Hartbeespoort Dam

especially reservoir limnology, remains an enduring constraint to progress in a country requiring high level stewardship of its critical life-supporting water resources . As long as the discipline does not form part of any nationally acknowledged need, no curricula or career opportunities will become available. Limnology is not a ‘sexy’ science. Unlike chemistry and microbiology, where funds and publication opportunities abound, lake biologists may not become financially rich. This writer would argue that they certainly have a unique opportunity for a richly rewarding outdoor life, but that it is challenging to persuade newcomers there are no careers for them! “South African limnology is in disarray. It is poorly funded, failing to address certain important environmental problems, lacks a cohesive sense of direction and its potential contributions to effective water resource management are grossly underrated”. This statement is, in several ways, almost as true now in 2023 as it was back in 1989 when it was voiced by one of the world’s most eminent limnologists, the late Dr Bill Williams. He continued, “ Additionally, many of its [South Africa’s] practitioners are dispirited and disillusioned, there has been significant attrition from their ranks, and few young South Africans regard limnology as a secure and attractive career. All of this might be comprehensible in a country with plentiful water of good quality; for this to be the case in a country

applied to river and wetland science in particular. South African reservoir limnology science reached its zenith during the 1980s, culminating with the report of the Hartbeespoort Dam Ecosystem Programme . This eight-year project generated an international level of impact:, 97 publications, 4 PhDs and a documentary film. Contrastingly, it reached an all-time nadir between 2006 and 2013, in an eight-year attempt to remediate conditions in the same, now notoriously hypertrophic, Hartbeespoort Dam. The latter project was declared to lack scientific rigour and technical guidance, ignored the fundamental causal issues and prior studies, deliberately ignored skills and advice, prevented the undertaking of proof of concept research funded by the Water Research Commission, generated spurious claims of success and, instead, wasted ZAR158 million on cosmetic pseudo-science ‘solutions’, attempted by insufficiently qualified or experienced personnel. Over the project’s eight year span, not a single peer-reviewed publication in a recognised journal was produced. The project was eventually and quietly terminated but, at time of writing, a ‘Hartbeespoort Remediation Season 2’ attempt is underway – absent any indications that lessons were learnt from the previous fiasco. The inability to attract young South African biological scientists to the field of limnology,

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