Staff, Students & Associates

Conservation Biology Masters Students (2011/12)

Hlengiwe Mbatha

Email: hlengiwe.mbatha@uct.ac.za

Hlengiwe grew up in Johannesburg where she completed her Bachelor of Science honours degree in Ecology, Environment and Conservation at the University of the Witwatersrand. After completing her degree she worked in the Kruger National Park as a research assistant and also took part in the Organisation for Tropical Studies (OTS) programme. She has recently worked as an intern at the CSIR, Stellenbosch, tackling projects to assess how biodiversity can be used to alleviate poverty, promoting the need for biodiversity conservation. Her main research interest is to study the relationships between different ecosystem services along the Enkangala grassland area of southern Africa, and to explore tradeoffs and synergies between them. She will conduct this work for her CB research project, working with Jeanne Nel at the CSIR to assess how different ecosystem services change with different land use activities in the Enkangala grassland area of Kwazulu Natal, South Africa. Hlengiwe aims to become a prominent conservation biologist in the world who does not only practise conservation but also does research that is practical and relevant to people’s livelihoods.

Mini-thesis

Trade-offs between different land uses, biodiversity conservation and the provision of ecosystem services in the Enkangala grasslands (Supervisors: Prof. William Bond, Dr Jeanne Nel and Dr Belinda Reyers)