This morning the wetland smelled of neglect.
Not the good, earthy kind of smell you expect after rain — but that sour mix of dog waste, stagnant water, and decay. The path was broken again. Mole heaps unattended. Trip hazards if you’re jogging, ankle-turners if you’re not paying attention. I slowed down, annoyed at first, then uneasy.
It’s easy for people to walk past a wetland and see nothing but a soggy inconvenience. For decades — generations, really — were taught to think of wetlands as wastelands: mosquito-ridden, disease-spreading places that needed to be drained and “fixed” so something productive could be built on top of them.
That mindset hasn’t gone away.
You see it in the small things. Dog waste left to leach into the soil. Paths left to crumble year after year. No urgency, no care. People treat these places like leftover land — a buffer zone for bad habits — rather than what they actually are: living systems doing critical work for us every single day.
On a recent walk an old couple told me about a young woman who refused to keep her dogs on their leashes. She let them run wild in the small pool of water left in the wetland because of the summer drought. When the elderly woman asked her to put her dogs on their leashes, the woman dog owner told the old lady to F— off. This is the attitude of most people.
The cost of this arrogance and apathy is far higher than a ruined walk in Mother Nature’s splendour.
Wetlands are South Africa’s most threatened ecosystem. According to the latest National Biodiversity Assessment, nearly 48% of the country’s wetland types are critically endangered. They make up only a tiny fraction of our land area, yet we’re losing them three times faster than forests.
They are often described as the kidneys of the landscape — filtering pollution, slowing floods, recharging groundwater, and supporting extraordinary biodiversity. When they fail, everything downstream pays the price. Flooding worsens. Water quality drops. Birds disappear. Insects vanish. The system unravels quietly, then suddenly.
The biodiversity is being squeezed from all sides.
Urban encroachment is the most obvious. In cities like Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban, wetlands are drained or built over in the name of development. It looks neat and profitable at first, until the heavy rains come and the natural sponge is gone. Then we act surprised by floods we engineered ourselves.
Then there’s the invisible pollution. It’s not just plastic and litter. Nitrogen and phosphorus from dog waste and garden fertilisers seep into the water. This fuels algae blooms that strip oxygen from the system, killing the insects and small fish that birds — like the herons I still see here — depend on.
Finally, there’s physical degradation. Broken paths, unmanaged foot traffic, erosion. When soil isn’t stabilised, the first early-autumn rain washes it straight into the wetland. The deep pools silt up. Habitat is lost. All because no one thought maintenance mattered.
The picture isn’t entirely bleak. The country has has programmes underway.
Working for Wetlands, part of the Expanded Public Works Programme, employs thousands of people to restore damaged wetlands using simple but effective methods — gabions, earth berms, and re-wetting techniques that slow water, trap sediment, and allow ecosystems to recover.
Through the Ramsar Convention, South Africa now has 32 wetlands of international importance, including the recently designated Agulhas Plain. Ramsar status brings stronger legal protection and international accountability — not a silver bullet, but a real step.
And then there’s citizen science. Ordinary people reporting bird sightings, water quality changes, and degradation signs help scientists track wetland health in real time. These systems only work if people are paying attention.
Caring doesn’t start with policy. It starts with noticing. With picking up after your dog. With reporting broken infrastructure. With understanding that the muddy, inconvenient patch of land you pass every day is quietly keeping your city habitable.
Wetlands don’t shout when they’re in trouble. They just smell of neglect — and wait to see if anyone notices.
