Mpumalanga Biodiversity Conservation Plan Handbook - bgis-sanbi

Box 6.2 continued
M P U M A L A N G A
Biodiversity
CHAPTER 6 - LAND-USE GUIDELINES
density of structures and users increases. Importantly, it excludes intensive recreational developments such as
golf and polo estates. These latter involve a high proportion of habitat loss and very high investments in
infrastructure. They are in effect urban developments outside the urban edge and fall more appropriately into
land-use type 10.
Land-Use Types 5 – 9 are rural and farming activities that have serious impacts on biodiversity. They are mutually
incompatible with biodiversity conservation, often accelerating degradation by causing extensive habitat loss,
soil erosion and hydrological changes. Their impacts vary from moderate to severe depletion of natural biota and
associated distortions of ecosystem functioning. Irrigated Crops and Timber Production impose particularly
heavy impacts on environmental services such as water production. Their actual impact can be considerably
reduced by factors such as small scale, dispersed and sensitive placement and general good land husbandry.
Land-Use Types 10 – 15 comprise urban and industrial developments which pave over and otherwise destroy natural
vegetation and soil. In the metros whole landscapes are modified in this way. Where biodiversity exists or is
deliberately protected, such as in urban nature reserves, it is distorted by its small scale and ecological isolation.
As such, urban biodiversity is largely symbolic, primarily serving social and environmental management needs.
An artificial urban biodiversity is created with the planting of ornamental and fruit trees and a large variety of
‘domestic’, mostly alien, garden plants. Although there are attractive aspects of this local abundance of trees
and birds (for instance) this should not be confused with natural biodiversity; they can be mutually antagonistic,
as when a garden plant becomes an alien invasive, spread by birds. Urban land uses also have important
secondary and cumulative negative impacts over the long-term, such as water pollution, acid mine drainage, and
increased run-off.
CONSERVATION PLAN HANDBOOK
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LAND-USE GUIDEINES