Over a century of intensive grazing has severely degraded vast areas of subtropical thicket in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. Once farmland, these landscapes have seen extensive biomass loss and ecological degradation, reducing biodiversity, harming ecosystem function and damaging socio-economic resilience in one of South Africa’s most impoverished provinces.

The Kuzuko Lodge Private Game Reserve Thicket Restoration Project restored over 5,200 hectares of degraded subtropical thicket by planting over 30 million indigenous succulent trees (Portulacaria afra, ‘spekboom’). In delivering this project TAG used numerous innovative techniques, from new plant propagation methods and soil-sampling protocols to land-degradation indices, as well as the construction and operation of a full-scale nursery and plant-propagation facility. More than 400 community members worked to measurably increase biodiversity, carbon sequestration, soil quality and soil water retention, providing large-scale and sustained community benefit.

TAG is proud that by demonstrating nature-based solutions and ecosystem restoration can secure both the environment and livelihoods, the project became one of the first in South Africa to achieve Verra’s Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) Standards certification.