With Level 3 water restrictions enforced by the City of Cape Town on Tuesday, water saving should be top of mind for all Capetonians. Following unsatisfactory rains this winter, officials estimated that, should the city’s current water usage trend continue, the dams that provide the
One of the most encouraging aspects to emerge from the Tokai plantation felling debate is the immense energy with which our local citizens tackle issues around nature and the outdoors. The people of Cape Town should feel proud, particularly in the wake of Heritage Day,
The Greek God The word Protea is believed to have been derived from the name of the Greek God ‘Proteus,’ who was able to take on many different forms. This is not surprising, given the huge variety of Proteas to be found across South Africa
Not so long ago, I had the privilege of sitting in the dappled shade of a magnificent Clanwilliam cedar tree. The 12 o’clock sun was baking, and we were scrambling uphill, rock-hopping, missioning, endlessly, until among the stark, Cederberg sandstone came a brief moment of
One of the key values of protected areas is to ensure that the biodiversity of a biome is protected and allowed to function in accordance with natural processes. The Cape Floristic Kingdom is the richest of the world’s six plant kingdoms, proportional to size, and
Biodiversity in the Cape Floristic Kingdom (CFK) is worth vast amounts to the South African economy. The wild flower industry alone is worth R150 million per annum – 80% of this as foreign exchange. The Cape deciduous fruit industry, that is worth R1 billion per
Critical breeding grounds for African Penguins, Cape Gannets, gulls, cormorants and tern species, the guano islands that lie off the coastline of the Western Cape of South Africa protect seabirds from disturbance and predation from land-based predators. Sadly, the populations of many of these seabirds
The marriage of conservation and human development has never been a happy one; historically the one has usually been accomplished at the expense of the other one. Conservation has excluded human development and has sometimes compromised it, while human development has often been achieved at
Habitat transformation in the Cape Floristic Kingdom (CFK) has been extreme since the time when Jan van Riebeeck landed in South Africa in 1652. As much as 31% of the CFK has already been completely transformed, with the major threats being agriculture, alien plants, afforestation