In a remote mountainous area south of Lesotho, lies an amazing piece of South Africa, home to impressive biodiversity and landscapes, waiting to be discovered. Covering about 30 000ha, the soon to be proclaimed national park brought together a group of specialists from various taxonomic fields and institutions for a week. Besides admiring the gorgeous…
A total of 2407 canopy trees of 17 species were monitored over a 22 year period in the Diepwalle indigenous forest dynamics research areas in the Garden Route National Park to assess species-specific mortality patterns and to develop and refine a set of criteria for the selection of harvest trees for timber species. Timber has…
Through the Cape south coast ichnology project, since 2008 more than 300 vertebrate Pleistocene tracksites have been identified along a 350 km stretch of the coastline of South Africa between Arniston and Robberg. A number of these occur within the coastal section of the Garden Route National Park. These are found in aeolianites (the cemented…
What does “provisioning” mean? It turns out it is often misused when discussing marine wildlife tourism. This paper proposes a new framework and language to describe the type of attractant used in common tourism operations. Studies focused on wildlife tourism are increasing, but the words used to describe the attractant can be confusing. For example,…
Early control efforts in the KNP were aimed at the eradication of species such as syringa (Melia azedarach) on the Sabie, Crocodile and Nsikasi Rivers. An attempt was made in 1956 to eradicate syringa by boring holes into the trunks and filling these with paraffin, and in 1957 through mechanical means. The use of registered…
South Africa has two genera of velvet worms – Peripatopsis occurring mainly in the Cape and Opisthopatus, occurring in the north-east of the country. They are nocturnal predators, ambushing other invertebrates with sticky slime squirted from a pair of specialised glands on their heads. A recent study of Cape velvet worms by Stellenbosch University researchers…
The Gras-Holpan section of Mokala National Park, is an almost 5000 ha piece of wilderness situated about 30 km outside of Kimberley. The park has unique vegetation because it is situated in an area where savanna meets Nama-karoo and on top of that, the area has some interesting wetlands in the form of ephemeral pans….
Numbers of animals are often of interest and importance for conservationists and the public. Trends in numbers are key indicators of conservation effectiveness. There are numerous ways to determine how many individuals of a species live in a park at a specific time, including aerial surveys, call-up surveys, dung counts and camera trapping. In smaller…
An article, led by Dr Adam Pellegrini from the University of Cambridge, was recently published in Nature (Ecology and Evolution) that considered global effects of long-term frequent fire on woody communities and traits. The experimental burn plots from Kruger National Park formed part of the sites used in the study. I started studying fire in…
As indicated in Part B, the invasion of alien species into the KNP could not be prevented. Unfortunately, little was done to combat the problem of IAPs until the 1950s, and even then, at an insufficient intensity to prevent or curtail the invasions. This was not a problem unique to the KNP, in fact, the…
The KNP, while a large conservation area under protection for the last century, has not escaped the increase in numbers of alien species. Only two accounts provide information on the intentional introduction of alien plants to the area that is now the KNP, before 1900. One was the planting of Spanish or giant reed (Arundo…
The statement that one needs to ‘Respond at the rate and scale of your threat or you will lose out to it’ has never been more apt than when dealing with the management of invasive alien species. Plants that are introduced to new environments often thrive and become invasive. Globally there is an increasing realization…