Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Renosterveld – a Virgin’s Perspective

by Dr Louise de Waal

As some of you may know, I have recently joint the Overberg Lowland Conservation Trust as a freelance consultant to help Odette with a wide range of jobs and duties. My first task was getting to grips with what the Trust does and of course what Renosterveld is. Fynbos and Renosterveld have intrigued me ever since I moved to South Africa. However, the sheer diversity of these vegetation types with their huge numbers of endemic species baffles a Western European trained environmental scientist at the same time.


As you can imagine, my learning curve has been a rather steep one, so thought I would share some Renosterveld facts that amazed me most.

Did you know?

Fynbos is the generic name for all 119 vegetation types in the Cape Floristic Region.

True Fynbos is generally associated with poor acidic sandy soils found in more mountainous and coastal regions and is characterised by a dominance of proteas, ericas (heather), and restios (reeds).

Renosterveld is generally found in lower lying areas on more fertile, clay- and shale-based soils, and is typified by the absence of these three ‘Fynbos indicators’. Instead it is dominated by Asteraceous shrubs, i.e. shrubs belonging to the daisy family of which the Renosterbos is one example, and often a diversity of grasses.

Renosterveld is not only the richest bulb kingdom in the world and it also has extremely high species diversity with literally 100s of different plants found in just a few hectares of Renosterveld.


New Renosterveld species are discovered all the time, like the Hesperantha kiaratayloriae, a little Iris that grows only on quartz patches in the Eastern Rûens and till now only a single population of this rare plant has been recorded.

Renosterveld originally covered the entire lowlands of the Overberg and only an estimated 4-6% remains today.

There are four types of Renosterveld found in the Overberg, Central Rûens Shale, Eastern Rûens Shale, Western Rûens Shale, and Rûens Silcrete Renosterveld. All are Critically Endangered.

We don’t really know what original Renosterveld looked like, as these veld types were radically transformed through livestock grazing and subsequent ploughing relatively soon after European settlement.


We believe that Fynbos was once grazed by large mammals, like black rhino, eland, red hartebeest, bontebok, quagga, and blue buck. Some of these are sadly now extinct.

Renosterveld is highly fragmented with over 12,000 remnants left. This may sound a lot, but 99% of those remnants are smaller than 80 ha and some are as small as 0.0001 ha.

The high occurrence of endemic and rare species makes Renosterveld extremely vulnerable to fragmentation, which often leads to high risks of extinction.


Friday, April 4, 2014

Our news is spreading...

Two of our respected fellow conservation organisations have shared our posts on their blogs: Fauna and Flora International and Africa Geographic!

Protecting one of the most threatened habitats on earth
 (FFI article)

Help give renosterveld a home
(Africa Geographic article)





Sunday, March 23, 2014

WE NEED YOUR HELP!!

We are running a crowd-funding campaign to raise money for the first-ever Visitor & Research Centre in renosterveld. The campaign starts on the 23rd March and will run for 40 days. We have only these 40 days to raise $25 000!!

Please help by contributing through www.igg.me/at/renosterveld-centre and sharing this link with as many friends, family and colleagues as you possibly can.

Without your help, we cannot make this happen.

 

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Latest OLCT News Update

Latest Overberg Lowlands Conservation Trust News Update:
Spring surveys, Animals in renosterveld, Extending our knowledge on distributions of rare and threatened plants and more...

Read our newsletter here: www.overbergrenosterveld.org.za/OLCT_Newsletter2_Jan2014.pdf

To receive our news by email, please visit www.overbergrenosterveld.org.za to sign up.


Sunday, October 13, 2013

FIRST RENOSTERVELD LAND PURCHASE IN THE OVERBERG!

We are VERY excited to announce that WWF-SA has purchased the first piece of renosterveld in the Overberg and we, the OLCT, will be managing this land as a nature reserve. We also hope to establish a research centre on the land. This is the result of nearly five years of collaborative efforts between us and WWF and finally, we have our first piece of land, secured forever for conservation.
 
The farm is called Haarwegskloof and comprises about 500 ha of Eastern Ruens Shale Renosterveld, just north of De Hoop Nature Reserve. This special veld contains several quartz patches, which are where we have found many of our new and threatened species - most notably, it contains the only known population of Polhillia curtisiae.
 
Thank you to our colleagues at WWF for never giving up and for persisting until this deal was closed. This is a hugely significant step forward for renosterveld conservation in the Overberg.  



Polhillia curtisiae, CR, only one known population in the world

        Gibbeaum haaglenii (EN) growing at Haarwegskloof
 

Haarwegskloof with quartz patches in the foreground. This farm is linked with large, adjacent patches, making it part of the largest pristine lowland renosterveld remaining on earth.

New Mazda Wildlife Vehicle for the OLCT!!

Mazda has treated us to a brand new vehicle and replaced the 'old' one with the new BT50 double-cab, 2.5, diesel bakkie. It is awesome!! Much lighter on fuel and a pleasure to drive. And it's beautiful :) Thank you Mazda!!

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Overberg Lowlands Conservation Trust: our first newsletter!

Please go to www.overbergrenosterveld.org.za and sign up to receive our quarterly newsletters if you would like to do so! :)


Evan Eifler's Blog




Please note that you can now follow Evan Eifler's posts on his Blog:
www.evanrenosterveld.blogspot.com

Evan is our American volunteer, who will be working with us for the year.

He is photographing as many plants and animals in renosterveld as he can over this period and uploading many of these images onto I-Spot (www.ispot.org.za) for adding to the central database, as well as getting assistance with IDs.

The idea is that we develop our renosterveld database in a way that will guide us for future conservation action in the Overberg's lowlands.

In our spring surveys, we have found new populations of several threatened species, which is very exciting!!
 
For example, this is Gladiolus vandermerwei, Endangered.
 
Then there is Moraea tricolor, a real little gem...
 
And this wonderful little Klein Karoo (Robertson) Chameleon...
 


Friday, July 12, 2013

The remains of the renosterveld

The remains of the Renosterveld
Farmer's Weekly | 5 July 2013


Download Article

Overberg Lowlands Conservation Trust director Odette Curtis talks about the value of fragments in this threatened ecosystem and the exciting discovery of six previously unknown botanical species. Fertile, low-lying habitats of the world have always been the most suitable for cultivation... read more

 

 Download Article