the richtersveld cultural and botanical landscape - SAHRA

Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape World Heritage Site Nomination 79
Succulent Karoo, the Gariep Centre is regarded as the richest with over 2700
species and with 80% of its endemics being succulents. The Richtersveld
Community Conservancy captures a core area of the Gariep Centre and provides a
diversity of environments including mountains, quartz fields and valleys enabling a
wide range of species to exist. These attributes make the Richtersveld Community
Conservancy one of the most important properties for biodiversity conservation, a
sentiment echoed by IUCN and Conservation International amongst others.
Pachypodium namaquanum (halfmens) and Aloe pillansii: two flagship species of the Richtersveld
The Richtersveld also has specific species of great value culturally and
scientifically. Pachypodium namaquanum is also known as the “halfmens” is one of
the flagship species for the desert regions of southern Namibia and northern South
Africa, and is regarded highly in Nama culture 7 . The Richtersveld Community
Conservancy represents a refuge for a large population of halfmens, as well as
nearly all of the known specimens of Aloe pillansii, an equally large and impressive
plant thought to be decreasing in numbers as a result of climate change. In
summary, some of the highest endemism rates in the world, two highly endangered
7 The halfmens plant attains a length and stature that reminds one of a human over a distance. It has a
heavy head that is always bend to the north, likely to increase solarisation in the winter months (it
loses the leaves in summer as a measure to combat water loss). This overall appearance gave rise to
the legend that the halfmens plants really are humans who fled across the !Gariep from Namibia and
then turned into plants, now longingly staring to the north where their ancestors came from, unable to
be reunited with them. In that sense the plant is very much an allegory of the Nama nation itself that
has become divided by an international border.