Mpumalanga Biodiversity Conservation Plan Handbook - bgis-sanbi

MPUMALANGA BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION PLAN HANDBOOK
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Wild Dog
Lycaon pictus
Also known as the Cape
hunting dog, this animal
is both the most
successful
hunting carnivore and the
most endangered
carnivore in Africa. Only
about 5 600 are estimated
to survive in the wild.
Most of these live in
Selous Game Reserve in
Tanzania, northern
Botswana and eastern
Namibia. A few are still
found in Zambia, Kenya,
Mozambique, Zimbabwe
and the Kruger Park.
TERRESTRIAL ANALYSIS
The terrestrial approach incorporates:
Use of fine-scale planning units able to be used at provincial and local municipal scales;
Selection of a wide range of species and ecosystem features to define biodiversity;
Use of cost surfaces to create bias for meeting terrestrial biodiversity targets within
important aquatic planning units (subcatchments);
Avoiding areas of conflict or threats from other priority land uses.
This combination of fine scale, large data sets, use of intelligent clumping of planning units
and the integration of aquatic and terrestrial assessments, is also novel.
PLANNING UNITS
The accuracy and fine-scale mapping of biodiversity data has enabled the use of planning
units that are small enough to be useful at the provincial and local municipal levels. A total of
65 000 hexagons were used as planning units, each 118 ha in size. Hexagons were chosen as
they are well suited to Marxan’s ability to cluster planning units and to produce ecologically
sensible patterns of related units.
PROTECTED AREAS
The protected area network layer was updated and mapped to show current levels of protection
for terrestrial biodiversity features. These protected areas are discussed in more detail in
Chapter 5 where both formal and informal protected areas are assessed. Only the
formal protected areas, those managed and/or formally proclaimed as nature reserves, are
included in the terrestrial analysis. Conservancies and Natural Heritage Sites are legally and
administratively weak at present and were not considered as providing effective long-term
protection due to their uncertain future. See Appendix 3 for an extended list of all protected
areas in the Province.
BIODIVERSITY FEATURES
Terrestrial biodiversity data, or surrogates for biodiversity features, were captured in GIS and
allocated to planning units. Data sources included the MTPA’s threatened species databases,
expert biologists, NGOs (e.g. Highland Crane Working Group), and museum databases.
Species were selected based on their conservation importance. This generally included all
Red Data Listed or threatened taxa for which sufficiently precise locality data were available.
Priority was given to local endemics and the MTPA responsibility for protecting these
endemics is reflected in the biodiversity targets for these species. A complete list of species
and their individual biodiversity targets is provided in the MBCP Technical Report. Table 4.2
lists the broad types and numbers of terrestrial biodiversity features used. All 340 terrestrial
biodiversity features are also listed on the main MBCP Map.
BIODIVERSITY TARGETS
As previously mentioned, systematic biodiversity planning requires the setting of a target (e.g.
a population size or area of habitat) for each biodiversity feature (e.g. species, ecosystem,
community or process). The target indicates how much of the feature is needed for it to be
conserved in the long term.
The MBCP used the NSBA targets for vegetation types, except for forests. The NSBA targets
M P U M A L A N G A
are based on the species diversity within each vegetation type: higher species diversity
Biodiversity
corresponds to a higher target. For the vegetation types that occur in Mpumalanga, targets
range from 19% to 28% of the original area of each vegetation type. Targets for forests are
taken from the DWAF national systematic conservation plan for forests. These targets range
from 59.5% to 71.7%. Species targets vary widely, up to 100% for Critically Endangered
species localities. The terrestrial biodiversity features used in the analysis are summarised in
Table 4.2.
CONSERVATION PLAN HANDBOOK