Above picture: Members of the 47th Marion Island Overwintering Team gather for a reunion. Back row: Ernst Rossouw (M41), Gerhard Jonker, Paul Munting, Andre Fourie and Christo Els. Front row: Albert Adams, Delmaine Botha and Piet Terblanche, with Roo and Roxy
In September this year seven members of the 47th Marion Island Overwintering Team of 1990/91 met up 33 years later to renew friendships and reminisce about their island year. The event was hosted by Andre Fourie, ornithologist on the M47 team, on his and partner Marienne de Villiers’ property Koetzerskraal, a Biodiversity Conservation Area in the foothills of the Swartberg Mountains near Oudsthoorn in the Western Cape. A special occasion!
Back in the day. The 20 members of the M47 team pose for their official group photograph on Marion Island in 1991. Andre Fourie is seated second left, front row
Andre writes fondly of his time on Marion: “It was an amazingly special year with really special people”, a view supported by the M47 team members sponsoring a generous 16 hectares towards the eradication of the Marion Island’s introduced House Mice. The funds were not only raised by those who attended the reunion, but also from team members who were unable to attend, including long-term supporter of the Mouse-Free Marion (MFM) Project, Jacha Potgieter.
M47 also held an earlier reunion at Koetzerskraal with eight of its team members present in 2016
Andre and Marienne (who has made seven research visits to Marion Island from 2001 to 2013) are also supporting the MFM Project by donating an original 14 x 12 cm artwork of a sky-calling Sooty Albatross on Marion Island by South African wildlife artist, Elizabeth Poulsom. The painting appears as a vignette in the coffee-table book “Marion and Prince Edward: Africa’s Southern Islands” by Aleks Terauds, John Cooper, Steven Chown and Peter Ryan. It will now be auctioned to raise funds for the project aboard next January’s Flock to Marion Island AGAIN! 2025 voyage – an auction originally proposed to the MFM Team by Andre and Marienne. Here’s hoping for fierce bidding and a goodly sum raised!
Sooty Albatross, a water colour by Elizabeth Poulsom
The MFM Project is deeply grateful for the support it has received from members of the island’s 47th Overwintering Team. It is such support that keeps us all fully committed to -seeing the end of Marion’s albatross-killing mice.
Andre Fourie and Marienne de Villiers aboard the S.A. Agulhas in August 2004 on their way to Marion Island to conduct research into the responses of seabirds to human disturbance
John Cooper, News Correspondent, Mouse-Free Marion Project, 19 November 2024
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The Mouse-Free Marion Project is a registered non-profit company (No. 2020/922433/08) in South Africa, established to eradicate the invasive albatross-killing mice on Marion Island in the Southern Ocean. The project was initiated by BirdLife South Africa and the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. Upon successful completion, the project will restore the critical breeding habitat of over two million seabirds, many globally threatened, and improve the island’s resilience to a warming climate. For more information or to support the project please visit mousefreemarion.org.
