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Talk on Wildflowers

02 Sep Posted by in Environment | Comments

 

Throughout South Africa, road reserves containing precious indigenous vegetation are being converted to weedy wastelands through judicious and systematic brushcutting. Masquerading as “road maintenance”, and justified as being “for safety”, this malignant practice has led to the disturbance and subsquent loss of precious habitats. In South Africa and particularly in the Cape, the lowland vegetation has been reduced to roadside fragments through urbanisation and agriculture. Road Reserves are now the only remaining habitats for many plant and animal species.

In 1991, Dawson published a finding that the conservation value of road reserves was high, and he suggested implementing a “minimal disturbance” practice. Now after more than 20 years, little has been done, notwithstanding delaying mowing till after flowering, to conserve these fragments. My research shows that we not only have a surprising diversity within these road reserves, 670 species including 60 species of conservation concern in 3.6 km², but we also have a tremendous amount of land in road reserves, about 15,000 km². The combination of these means that road reserves are more valuable to conservation than all the reserves of Cape Town put together! It’s time we started protecting this dwindling resource!

Free tickets are available from the links below to talks every night from 7-9pm:
The Constantia talk is on Tuesday the 3rd of September:
The Stellenbosch botanic Garden on Wednesday the 4th: 
The Rustenburg High School for Girls presentation on Thursday the 5th: 
The UCT presentation on Friday the 6th: 

I have put together a petition which I will be delivering to parliament on the 9th of September. Please sign it and pass it on:

To document and conserve biodiversity, I am raising funds that will be administered through my NGO, CASABIO.org. Here follows the current initiatives.

– Last month I found a new species of dolls rose in the road reserve. Some flowers were cast in solid sterling silver by acclaimed artist Nic Bladen. This unique pendant, along with the right to name the plant is being auctioned on:

– My Springtastic Roadshow – More information is available on:

– To donate directly via bank transfer, visit:

Feel free to visit the website of my NGO: http://www.casabio.org. or email me directly on capebio@gmail.com

This is the one chance we have to stop the destruction of our precious flora. Please help me to make a difference.

Regards, David Gwynne-Evans

CEO of CASABIO – The Home of Biodiversity

capebio@gmail.com

(+27) 72 368 9244

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