Major conservation win for Cape Floral Kingdom
The biodiversity conservation of the Cape Floral Kingdom was given a major boost on 3 July 2015, when UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee approved the expansion of the Cape Floral Region Protected Areas (CFRPA) World Heritage Site. With the approval of this expansion the CFRPA has increased in size from 557,584 ha to 1,094,741 ha, and now includes 163 new land pockets, all of which were previous Protected Areas. The World Heritage Site (WHS) Extension includes additional properties within the existing WHS complexes, such as Table Mountain National Park and the Boland Mountains, as well as new complexes in the Garden Route and Agulhas.
“It is a big win for conservation that the original Cape Floristic Region Protected Areas (CFRPA) World Heritage Site has been doubled in size. We can celebrate that important fynbos and its associated ecosystems will now be receiving further protection and attention,” says The Table Mountain Fund Manager, Dr Cliff Dlamini.
“The Table Mountain Fund is proud to have provided financial support to this process and congratulates SANParks, CapeNature and the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency, who jointly compiled the application to extend the Cape Floral Kingdom boundaries, on this major conservation win.”
World Heritage Status
In order to qualify for World Heritage status a site must be of Outstanding Universal Value from the point of view of science or conservation; it must contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species; and it must have outstanding examples representing significant ongoing ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals.
