The Agulhas long-billed lark’s habitat is threatened by commercial farming.
Courtesy Odette Curtis-Scott
The Agulhas long-billed lark builds nests on the ground in endangered fynbos vegetation. Here’s how it is surviving.
Fire at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Photo by Brenton Geach/Gallo Images via Getty Images
Autumn extreme fire weather around Cape Town in South Africa has become 90% more likely in a warmer world.
Image courtesy Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures Entertainment
Hollywood undermines Africa’s struggles, creating a false impression of the continent to please western viewers.
Wildfires are the inevitable consequence of three factors coming together at the same time: an ignition, the weather and fuel.
Brenton Geach/Gallo Images via Getty Images
The fynbos vegetation that historically clothed the slopes of Table Mountain is highly inflammable. This has been worsened by the spread of alien trees that burn more intensely than the fynbos.
A wildfire spread across the slopes of Table Mountain to the University of Cape Town.
Photo by Brenton Geach/Gallo Images via Getty Images
Fire hazards are influenced by three factors: weather, an ignition source and fuel loads. The first two are unpredictable. But fuel loads can be managed.
Fynbos, the biodiverse shrubland in Cape Town, is thought to have the third highest carbon stored per square metre for any biome in South Africa. It must be protected.
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Cape Town’s new climate strategy is a good start. But it falls short when it comes to nature.
The tops of diseased, dying trees amid healthy trees in South Africa’s Harold Porter Botanical Gardens.
Mike Wingfield
These plants play a crucial role in a delicate ecosystem. If Cape Beech trees or in fact other native tree species are wiped out, that whole ecosystem shifts.
A fire rages through wetlands close to Cape Town in February 2017.
EPA/Nic Bothma
The danger of fires in the Cape region this season is partly dependent on how the Fynbos has been managed over the past few decades.
Male Rockjumper in the Swartberg mountains.
Krista Oswald
The number of Cape Rockjumpers’ are declining and the reason might be the weather.
Invasive pine trees in the Western Cape have affected lizards causing their numbers to drop significantly.
Author supplied
Invasive plants have an impact on native species and unless these factors are properly understood, it is difficult to predict what sort of impact invasive plants will have.
A worker piles up leaves of rooibos tea for drying. Local people have been marginalised in the industry.
Mike Hutchings/Reuters
The rooibos industry has been accompanied by dispossession and adversity stretching back over centuries.
Jeremy Midgley
A tall grass-like plant in the Western Cape has managed to dupe dung beetles into rolling and spreading its seeds.
South Africa’s Proteaceae family, makes up a part of fynbos, a floral region with plants unique to South Africa Cape Town’s Table Mountain National Park.
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Restoring habitats have numerous benefits, they can also benefit humanity. But it is for people to be convinced that they can actually do good.
The orange-breasted sunbird is endemic to South Africa’s fynbos.
Marisa Estivill/Shutterstock
Given the global commitment to conserve biodiversity in the face of climate change, it is important to understand how biodiversity arises in the first place – and how it is maintained.
Pied crow numbers are growing because of powerlines and climate change. This growth is distressing to some.
Peter Ryan
South Africa’s pied crows are moving to areas where the climate suits them more.