Timeless Reflection: the WHY?

(or: why on Earth would anyone try this)

The holiday slowdown.

The ceremonial flipping of calendars.

Or the collective hangover from a year turbocharged by AI promises that were going to change everything (again).

Whatever the excuse, this moment begs for a pause. The kind where you stare at rocks, question the relative nature of time, and realise that Namibia has been doing “long-term thinking” for a few hundred million years already (Namibia’s Ancient Wrinkles).

And so we arrive at the awkward Christmas dinner question from the family:

Why Löwen River Rewilding?

The what is easy. Spades, fences, plants, patience. We’ll get to that — with scorecards for 2025 and optimism for 2026.

The why? slightly uncomfortable, takes honesty.

👉. Why not?

The obvious.

We live in a world of abundance. Even when it feels chaotic, expensive, and mildly apocalyptic, the Western lifestyle still runs on excess — calories, consumption, opinions.

There’s no magic wand for climate change or inequality. Progress compounds. Slowly. Annoyingly.

📈 a 1% improvement, multiplied by enough people over enough time, is still the only math that has ever worked. No app update.

So why should it not be us?

Why not sink some time, money, and sanity into rewilding an overgrazed patch of southern Namibia?

Worst case? We learn.

Best case? Nature does what it’s always done when given half a chance.

🤔. If not “us”, then who?

Reality check ♟️.

In Africa, patience is a luxury. Conservation competes with survival.

As conservationists have been bluntly reminding us for decades:

conservation will never prevail on empty stomachs.

Namibia looks prosperous, on paper. An average monthly salary of around €1,000/US$1,100 (2024) places it relatively high on the continent. But the Gini coefficient tells the real story. Mining wealth on one end. Subsistence farming on the other.

📊 Still today, 45% of Namibians live rurally (down from 72% in 1990). Progress, yes. But also pressure. When survival is the priority, long-term ecological thinking doesn’t top the to-do list.

If a small group of people can afford to wait, experiment, and fail — responsibility comes with it.

🌱. Because loving nature isn’t enough

Many of us share the same origin story.

The childhood dream: vet, ranger, biologist, person who saves animals.

At Löwen River Rewilding, that love is paired with something less romantic but more useful: research. Translation: we’re still learning — which makes field-level experimentation essential.

Because desertification is efficient.

vegetation removed → runoff increases → gullies form → groundwater drains → soil erodes → temperatures spike → fertility collapses

🕰️recent studies suggest recovery takes 100–400 years, depending on rainfall and soil compaction. And this is not a niche issue: 🌍35% of the planet’s land surface is semi-arid, affecting ~850 million people.

The awkward part? Academic research is still sparse. Most of it focuses on the southwestern US and southeastern Spain — a region where poor management literally manufactured deserts. Newer work argues for restoring ecosystem function (how systems work) alongside structure (how they look). David Bainbridge’s A Guide for Desert and Dryland Restoration (2008, updated in 2025 as New Hope) remains a desert restoration bible.

🛠️. Because it’s weirdly addictive

Here’s the secret no one tells you.

Restoration is satisfying.

It’s like gardening… except:

➡️ bigger scale

➡️ slower feedback

➡️ real consequences

Add in logistics, social community, water, solar pumps, and the occasional existential crisis, and suddenly you’re playing 🎮 SimCity: Desert Edition. No cheat codes. No restart.

Every gabion holds or fails.

Every plant survives or doesn’t.

Every decision sticks.

🌍. Controlled bravado (with humility)

“Nobody said it was impossible — so we’re doing it.”

Yes, it sounds bold. Slightly reckless. Desert restoration is neither easy nor cheap, and optimism alone doesn’t grow trees.

Our benchmark is functionality, closer to how land was 100–150 years ago, when use by native communities was sustainable. 

Push the rewind button further and you “land” around 100,000 years ago, when San hunter-gatherers ranged across southern Africa — one of the world’s oldest continuous cultures.

We’re not trying to remove humans from the system. We’re relearning how to belong in it.

🔑 … so why Löwen River Rewilding?

because giving land a chance to heal is, inconveniently, also a mirror held up to how we choose to live.

Next up: the WHAT — objectives, experiments, and a few decisions for 2025 and beyond.