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Land use on the Agulhas Plain Hennis Germishuys Landcare HennisG@elsenburg.com AgriPROBE September 2007 Partnerships to preserve biodiversity “Cape Agulhas!” Another busload of tourists disgorges at the candy-striped lighthouse, jostling to have their photographs taken at the southern tip of the continent of Africa. In recent years, the list of reasons why people choose to visit the Agulhas Plain has been growing steadily: whale watching, shark cage diving, the fynbos, local history, culture and crafts. Both directly and indirectly, biodiversity is proving vital to the local economy. Eco-tourism is growing rapidly and the harvesting of fynbos wildflowers is currently one of the largest industries on the Agulhas Plain. In this predominantly rural area with up to 50% unemployment, the Agulhas Biodiversity Initiative (ABI) is investigating how to use the region’s biodiversity in a sustainable manner so that it can benefit local communities in the long term. The Agulhas Plain stretches from the Klein River in the west to the Breede River in the east, covering 270 000 ha of coastal lowlands and hills that stretch northwards towards the mountains. The diversity of indigenous fynbos and Renosterveld plants is enormous: of the 2 500 species that occur here, 100 are endemic to the Agulhas Plain and about 112 are found on the Red Data list. Originally, the Agulhas Plain supported large herds of game, and 72 of the 81 species of terrestrial mammals that occurred in the Cape Floristic Region were found here. Some species like blue buck, quagga and Cape lion are now extinct and today many species are found only in protected areas like De Hoop Nature Reserve and Agulhas National Park. Programmes like the Agulhas Biodiversity Initiative rely on the cooperation and effective participation of a number of stakeholders. Similarly, provincial and local authority initiatives require integrated planning across a number of sectors. In the Overberg, role players have come up with a strategy to help them operate in a more integrated and efficient way. The Department of Agriculture and SANParks have entered into a Memorandum of Co-operation, which is currently being expanded to include CapeNature. One of the outcomes of this agreement is the establishment of the Bredasdorp Multipurpose Centre, a “one-stop shop” that can potentially house stakeholders from a number of government departments, including the Department of Agriculture, SANParks, Cape Nature, DEADP, DWAF, Department of Land Affairs, local authorities and social welfare organisations. Establishing the Agulhas National Park In the early 1990s, SANParks started investigating the establishment of a National Park on the Agulhas Plain. In 1996, the SANParks Board approved the declaration of the Agulhas National Park (ANP), which incorporated conservation priority areas that had been identified in the IPC study. SANParks planned to purchase 26 000 ha of land outright and to enter into contractual arrangements with landowners to incorporate a further 44 000ha. The consolidation of the Agulhas National Park is proceeding as planned. The Department of Agriculture – A key partner Trust is at the heart of all successful negotiations, especially when they involve landowners and government. On the Agulhas Plain, attempts to get farmers to sell their land to SANParks resulted in some landowners feeling uneasy about the intentions of State conservation agencies. In an area where most of the land is zoned agricultural, the Department of Agriculture has become a significant roleplayer in biodiversity conservation efforts, in particular through its LandCare: Area Wide Planning (AWP) programme. LandCare is a programme of the Department of Agriculture that aims to maintain and restore healthy, productive agricultural land through integrated 12
natural resource management, capacity building and partnerships. Through a process known as Area Wide Planning (AWP), the department works with groups of farmers to develop sustainable land management plans at a sub-regional level. These plans take into account the issues, needs and opportunities identified by the group and are linked to municipal Integrated Development Plans (IDPs). Through the AWP process, groups of farmers can identify projects and seek funding from LandCare and the local municipality. One of the functions of AWP is fine-scale farm planning. The Department of Agriculture works with landowners to identify zones on their properties that are suitable for different land uses. In rural areas, the distinction is made between priority agricultural land and priority conservation land. Through the CAPE programme fine-scale (1:10 000) biodiversity maps have been prepared for the Agulhas Plain indicating the vegetation types and areas that are most critically in need of conservation. The Department of Agriculture uses these maps during AWP and farm planning exercises, and can therefore recommend not only which parts of the farm are most suitable for grazing, crops and infrastructure, but also which areas should be managed for biodiversity. Feedback from the biological surveys undertaken during the 1990s reaffirmed what many farmers in the area already knew: the Agulhas Plain was a biodiversity treasure. Rather than seeing this as a threat to their farming operations, some landowners recognised that conservation offered them opportunities to diversify and improve their incomes. Once they knew which terrestrial and wetland habitats should be conserved, they could set these aside and continue farming on the less critical sections of their properties. The conservation areas then became an eco-tourism draw-card. By integrating agricultural and conservation planning in this way, the Department of Agriculture is helping to implement the ecosystem approach to biodiversity conservation in a practical way on the Agulhas Plain. Dune asteraceous fynbos on the Agulhas Plain. Not the typical fynbos view. All photographs used with kind permission of Agulhas National Park, photograph by Douglas Euston-Brown. 13 Spot on! On the 5 km 2 site where Eskom planned to construct a nuclear power station 45 plant species endemic to the Agulhas Plain were found, including four site endemics. AgriPROBE September 2007
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