the richtersveld cultural and botanical landscape - SAHRA

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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.
Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape World Heritage Site Nomination 80 flagship species, the richest variety of succulents on earth, florally the richest arid region on earth, and the extraordinary richness of the Mesembryanthemaceae family justifies that the Richtersveld Community Conservancy meets this criterion and is universally valuable to science and conservation. 3.b Proposed Statement of Outstanding Universal Value The Richtersveld has the highest botanical diversity and rates of endemism of any arid region representing more succulent flora than any other part of the world with plants exhibiting unique ecological techniques to enable them to survive in such an extreme environment, and a cultural landscape encompassing the two thousand year old transhumance pastoral livelihood of the Nama people and their sustainable use of and relationship with the environment of the Succulent Karoo Biodiversity Hotspot. These factors together converge to present a unique environment of one of the world’s most important sites for the conservation and study of succulent flora and the preservation of a livelihood which was once a common way of life throughout the world. 3.c. Comparative Analysis Several existing World Heritage Sites can be compared to the Richtersveld in regards to biodiversity, cultural heritage and cultural landscape. Through a comparative analysis, numerous similarities emerge between other sites and the Conservancy which reveal it as not only comparable in terms of World Heritage justification but also highly unique. The analysis underpinned just how different and valuable the Conservancy is, when compared to other deserts and other pastoral cultures on the list. Compared World Heritage Sites included the following: • Laponian Area, Sweden • Hortobagy National Park, Hungary • Pyrenees – Mont Perdu, France and Spain • Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley, Andorra
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the richtersveld cultural and botanical landscape - SAHRA

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