Dam!

What a MEGA difference, 3 months can make! Dates can be confusing, but I am sticking to Rewilding knitting and far away from any MAGA comment. Vocabulary use of ‘GREAT’ or ‘HUGE’ is purely fortuitous. 

We are wrapping up the 100-day rainy season and what a season it was: HUGE! Never was Namibia so successful in its rain dance. We could blame the slow start to South Africa or Botswana, but we just need to be PATIENT. Changing the climate or geopolitical dynamics takes time. So, I already decided that my mandate will extend beyond 4-YEAR.  

Everywhere I went to Namibia in March or April, it rained. And people cheered. Everyone connected to the bush network got the memo. I already miss my campaign (read: field trip). So, let me fill you in (rain meter style).  

We had light rainfall almost every week over February-March on the Löwen River landscape, just enough to prompt (vegetation) regrowth and the permeation of water into the soil and down to the aquifers. That impromptu pattern taught us 3 key lessons:

• elevation comes with perks: rainfall varies tremendously across the property. Topography plays a big role in the amount of water we get. The plateau (on top of the mountains) and the canyon get the most rain (4-5 times what the plains received this year) 

• catchment design by Mother Nature: millions of years shaped natural areas with bedrocks at the top of the mountains or with sand and river beds (at lower altitude where erosion played out)

• rock-solid purification: we have GREAT natural filters. 100m high layers of rocks clean water in roughly a week, from the rainfall on the mountain tops to the water pools at the bottom of the cliffs in the canyon

NATURE’s plumbing is AWESOME!

Further anecdotal wisdom from the underwater frontlines:

• clouds = rain: Namibians don’t debate. They see a cloud or cloud cover, and they run outside to dance

• wind is a rain whisperer: in a big open area like Namibia, cloud mass does not dictate where it rains. Wind does. Mostly from the North East (Botswana) or South (convergence of the Atlantic and Indian oceans) 

• greenshoot’s lag is real: regrowth takes 7-10 days post rain - and comes in many disguises: flowers, weeds, grass, leaves

Our rain meters tried their best… unfortunately, we can not give a scientific precipitation breakdown this year. Some meters were blown away, others were added to increase our coverage. 

So we decided to BRING BACK water from NEARSHORING COUNTRIES, and Windhoek as well as the Northern region got copious rainfalls. Against an annual average of 370-400mm, the first 3 months of 2025 delivered >500mm (table below). March alone clocked at 293mm (vs. 90mm on average). 

Windhoek Rainfall Summary (namsearch.com)

The heavy rains that pounded that area created a national disaster: on the eve of Independence Day (March 21st), a bridge on the B1 road collapsed. The road network in Namibia works well: tarred roads (labelled B from South to North and from East to West as well as West to East) and many gravel routes are a national pride and recognized as one of the best on the continent. The closure of the B1, a major artery for supply chain (it links Windhoek to South Africa), made the headlines. 

36mm (36 liters per square meter) of precipitation on March 20 in Windhoek was enough to close parts of the city center for flooding. Drainage systems can not keep pace with that intensity and a growing urbanisation. Elsewhere, in Botswana and South Africa, extreme rainfall episodes had also caused flooding and several casualties. Past that acute event that got people trapped and river beds flowing again, dams started filling up. 

it's a rental! pulled through an overflowing river bed. Water up to the window frame 🌊

Namibia operates 5 larger dams that feed from perennial rivers and supply major regions of the country. Neckartal Dam, completed in 2018, sits on Fish River and is the country’s largest with 850 million cubic meters of capacity. Closer to us (at 30km, Neckartal is 55km away), Naute Dam was built in 1972 to hold up to 69 million cubic meters.  

Historical data in the last 20 years (graph below) show us that the last time Naute Dam was over capacity (>100%) is in February-March 2022. Which coincides with the moment NamWater last opened the sluices and released water.

And because of the inflow from the North (higher altitude areas) to the South, Naute Dam’s sluices were opened again twice in April 2025 (April 8, 22). Every time, the opening was less than 1m and over a 12-hour window. 

Naute Dam on 8 April with the overflow running in Löwen River!

The impact downstream is SO BIG: the initial flow of 200 cubic meters per second increases to 300 m3 with the objective to first lower the level to 104% (from 107.6%). Ultimately, the capacity needs to go down by 20 million cubic meters. 

For scale:

➡️ 20 million m³ = 20 billion liters

➡️ = 10,000 Olympic swimming pools

➡️ = One very happy ecosystem.   

The most visible and direct consequence of that release is that water starts flowing in long dry river beds. Pools as well as natural catchments retain some of the flow. It is difficult to estimate how much water reached Löwen River Rewilding (5-10% of the total flow?) but it unequivocally recharged the water tables as well as created oases of green that we did not know we had.     

I am telling YOU: IT IS HUGE! and the undeniable start of a new cycle (/mandate).