A landmark report about the challenges facing the Cape Floral Region (CFR) over the next century was published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa this week.
The 95-page report, compiled by a group of leading experts from South African universities and conservation organisations, follows 70 years after the publication of the Wicht Commission's report on the preservation of the vegetation of the south western Cape in 1945.
Prof. Brian van Wilgen, an internationally-recognised specialist in conservation ecology at the DST/NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology (C·I·B) at Stellenbosch University (SU) and lead-author, says the research programme constitutes "the longest history of concerted scientific endeavour aimed at the conservation of an entire region and its constituent vegetation and animals anywhere in the world".
When looking back, he says there are certainly achievements worth celebrating: "Good news is that over the past 70 years we have substantially increased our levels of understanding, vastly expanded our protected area networks, obtained World Heritage Site status for some areas, raised awareness among the public and maintained a vibrant conservation community.
"However," he warns "we will have to fundamentally change the way we do things if we are to prevent massive loss of the unique fynbos over the next century.
Some of the far-reaching suggestions from the report include the need for trade-offs, or "conservation triage".
"We need to focus scarce resources on looking after the priority formal protected areas, and we need to accept some trade-offs. If we are going to be successful, we need, for example, to ignore some areas in order to save others. We may also need to relax fire restrictions aimed at optimal biodiversity outcomes in order to get on top of the alien plant problem."
Key findings from the report are:
- Fires are currently not well managed in the CFR. The need for ecological outcomes (such as those precipitated by high-intensity fires) is generally overridden by safety concerns, making it difficult to obtain the necessary permission to conduct prescribed burns at the best time for the vegetation; as a result, fire regimes are dominated by unplanned wildfires.
- With regard to invasive alien plants, the Wicht committee's observation that scarce resources should be focused for control on selected areas, and by implication ignoring others, remains valid today, despite enormous sums of money having been spent over the past two decades.
- The rapidly increasing, but difficult to quantify, harvesting of a range of plant products for traditional medicine is re-emerging as a significant threat to conservation.
- Although our protected area network has grown, the capacity and funding to manage them has shrunk in real terms.
The report also comes to the conclusion that it will not be feasible to prevent all climate-induced extinctions in the event of significant warming.
It does highlight, however, the impact of "the exponential increase of people in urban areas in the 20th century and the impact of development on the Cape's unique biodiversity assets" as a critical focus for the conservation community.
The co-authors on this landmark report are Prof. Jane Carruthers (UNISA), Prof. Richard Cowling (NMMU), Prof. Karen Esler (SU), Aurelia Forsyth (CapeNature), Dr Mirijam Gaertner (C·I·B), Timm Hoffman (UCT), Prof. Frederick Kruger (UFS), Prof. Guy Midgley (SU), Guy Palmer (CapeNature), Genevieve Pence (CapeNature), Domitilla Raimondo (SANBI), Prof. David Richardson (C·I·B), Dr Nicola van Wilgen (C·I·B and SANParks) and Prof. John Wilson (C·I·B).
The article "Ecological research and conservation management in the Cape Floristic Region between 1945 and 2015: History, current understanding and future challenges" is available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0035919X.2016.1225607
Contact details
Prof. Brian W. van Wilgen
Centre for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch University
T: (+27) 021 808 2835
M: (+27) 082 454 9726
E: bvanwilgen@sun.ac.za
www.sun.ac.za/cib
Photo: Protea neriifolia in the Cape Fynbos. Photographer: Derek Keats (https://www.flickr.com/photos/dkeats/89035784/in/photostream/)
