Above picture: Leandri de Kock and Arend de Beer ride in their Mouse-Free Marion Cycling jerseys for the first time in Pretoria, Gauteng
Members of the Mouse-Free Marion (MFM) Project are an athletic lot, with many engaging in regular outdoor exercise. Back in June this year, Project Manager Dr Anton Wolfaardt successfully completed a 52-km mountain trail run, raising R 103 000 for the project as he did so. Not to be outdone, in July MFM Project Research and Reporting Officer, Dr Liezl Pretorius started to walk 2300 km over 12 months to raise project funds via her online appeal “A Year for the Birds”.
Now the MFM Project is taking to bicycles to create awareness and to raise more of the needed funds. The idea for a Mouse-Free Project Cycling Team was independently thought up by the project’s News Correspondent, Liezl and Leandri de Kock (Marion Island 2020/21 over-winterer). In April 2023 Leandri and Arend de Beer raised R 15 000 (tripling her target) for the project by cycling a 105-km race in Gauteng with two friends. The three of us are now working together to raise R 109 000 via a GivenGain online appeal by entering charity teams in the Virgin Active Ride Joburg in Johannesburg, Gauteng over 97 km this November and in the 47th Cape Town Cycle Tour over 109 km come March next year. In Johannesburg we will cycle over the iconic Nelson Mandela Bridge. The Cape Town event is the world’s largest individually timed cycle race, taking place along the spectacular coastline of the Cape Peninsula, with a large part of the route falling within the Table Mountain National Park that forms part of the Cape Floral Region Protected Areas World Heritage Site.
The Mouse-Free Marion Cycling Team jersey; artistic design and manufacture by Simoné Smit of Salt Cycling
So far, the MFM Cycling Team has signed up 21 members. Each of us will be asked to raise funds for the project and to ride together as a team in the events we enter. We have worked with Salt Cycling, a South African custom cycling brand, to design and produce a distinctive cycling jersey to wear for camaraderie and to increase awareness. Come spring in September, we will start with social rides on good-weather Sundays to get to know each other and to practice riding in a group. With of course, the near obligatory coffee and cake stops in a café afterwards!
Salt Cycling’s seamstress, Sophy Zanele, works on a Mouse-Free Marion Cycling jersey; photograph by Simoné Smit
Mouse-Free Marion Cycling is open to new members who are interested in cycling with us to raise funds via our GivenGain appeal and to increase awareness by purchasing and wearing a MFM Cycling jersey. Initial enquiries should me made to info@mousefreemarion.org.
The Mouse-Free Marion Cycling Team will post updates from time to time, starting with our first event in around three months. Until then, cycle safe and please keep in mind the Victorian author H.G. Wells’ quote well known to cyclists “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”
Racked Mouse-Free Marion Cycling jerseys at Salt Cycling before despatch; photograph by Simoné Smit
John Cooper, News Correspondent, Mouse-Free Marion Project, 03 September 2024
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Endangered Grey-headed Albatrosses breed on Marion Island, where they are serious risk from attacks by the introduced House Mice; poster by the Agreement on the Conservation Albatrosses and Petrels
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.
