ECOLOGICAL ALARM: Beautiful region, scary findings: CapeNature’s latest report card

Every year CapeNature publishes a succinct, brilliant and often scary State of Conservation Report on nature in the landscapes under its watch. Extensive research by scientists, field rangers and conservation teams is stitched into easily understood graphics.

From the latest report it’s clear the Western Cape’s biodiversity is taking considerable strain. The outcome is a bit like a beautiful patient going in for a medical checkup saying she feels fine – until the blood tests arrive.

The state of systems and creatures are assessed this way. It’s a stark lens of concern:

Inland water

Let’s start with estuaries, those inland waterways that kiss the seashore and where a huge number of the sea’s fish start as babies. Twenty-two endangered, 23 vulnerable, only nine are of least concern. For freshwater systems it’s far worse: 29 are critically endangered, 27 are endangered and 23 are vulnerable. These include 64 rivers, 32 wetlands and six “strategic water source areas”.

Ecosystems 

How about the Western Cape land ecosystems? Of these, 174 are threatened – a softer way of saying we humans are screwing them up – and of those, 42 critically threatened. Habitats are a more focused category, and among them in the Western Cape 42 are critically endangered and 30 endangered.

Species

In case you want to know how many indigenous species are threatened – well, maybe you don’t because it’s too painful, but you need to know – here’s the list species list:

A success story, if you class a few more of the very few, is the riverine rabbit which rose from critically endangered to merely endangered, mainly because of its fierce protection at Sanbona Wildlife Reserve. But then two species of long-fingered bat, the aardvark, Lesueur’s hairy bat and the laminate vlei rat dropped to near threatened or, in the last two cases, vulnerable. The decline of the Natal long-fingered bat is flagged as the result of collisions with wind turbines.

Plants

Plants are in a whole different league: 297 critically endangered, 688 endangered and 981 vulnerable. The province holds nearly half of South Africa’s floral diversity, but an even larger share of its threatened plants. Many grow nowhere else. Lose them here and there’s no backup population waiting across the provincial boundary.

Sharks

Sharks are clearly not having a good time around humans – longlined, drag netted and sport fished. Some time back Daily Maverick discovered what was happening to sharks hooked on longlines: they were being exported to Australia and sold as fish and chips. We don’t think the Australians knew.

Birds

On the bird front the counts were up on raptors, coastal seabirds and terrestrial birds (the latter possibly bolstered by hadadas), but in a single year the situation of 31 species of water birds worsened. Their predicament points towards a much larger problem: the condition of the places where they feed and breed.

 Plant poaching

Plant poaching increased sharply after 2020, driven largely by succulent species. Conophytum species dominated seizures during the peak years (2021–2024) with other plant groups also increasingly targeted. Seized succulents end up in Kirstenbosch, where its greenhouses are being overwhelmed.

Fire

Another big worry was fire. In the 2025/26 fire season there were 29 – more than three times the 25-year average. Most were lit by people. Just two fires in the Cederberg burned 61% of its mountain veld – the one at Uitkyk last December took out 30,000 hectares and burned for 11 days.

Good news

But there’s good news too. In a single year 25 new nature reserves were declared, adding 44,233 hectares under CapeNature protection. Seven more sites are being lined up, which will add another 20,000 hectares when the paperwork gets its signatures.

In the Berg River area, about 7,000 hectares were cleared of invasive vegetation. And  – heaven knows how they count them – 11,663 fledgling gannets left Bird Island after the breeding season, no doubt after appropriate schooling in deep diving.

A new species of fish, Pseudobarbus outeniqua, and a colophon beetle (Colophon scholtzi) were discovered.

And a little treasure was found. On Botmaskop near Stellenbosch, felling a pine plantation exposed a previously undescribed iris, Moraea anastasia. A lovely discovery, although the report already flags it as critically endangered. It has entered the scientific record needing urgent attention.

In conclusion

It’s difficult to read a report like this and feel good about our species. But on the other hand there are organisations like CapeNature without which the Western Cape would be in a far worse state in terms of biodiversity.

In a city it’s easy to forget that we’re all part of the fabric of life beyond it on which we depend.

When we pop into our local grocery store and look around, we seldom register where all that stuff comes from and what it depends upon. Someone once said our wild places are where our souls go to shop. Without them something in us starves. We should take more care of them than we do. DM