What will YOU say to your grandchildren about Tokai Park? Hmmm?

Please consider these questions carefully – look to the long term future.

1) Will our grandchildren ask us why we did not conserve this area while we still had the chance?

2) How will you answer?

3) Will you be proud of your choices?

As a supporter of Tokai Park – from the Cape Flats Sand Fynbos point of view – I think it is critically important to recognise the international significance of the Cape Flats Sand Fynbos habitat. This opportunity to add another 20 hectares of Cape Flats Sand Fynbos to a National Park and eventually extend an existing (adjacent) World Heritage site (in future extensions of the CFRPA-WHS) is one that we should not let pass.

I am not averse to trees – I love them – I LOVE forests, but planting trees on this Critically Endangered habitat is much like introducing rabbits back into Australia – it is a ‘nice’ idea (rabbits are cuddly) but the long term view is not good – rabbits destroy habitat when they are out of their own habitat. Cape Flats Sand Fynbos does not cope with shade.

Those who are trying to request a conservation-minded approach to this specific area – for a number of really good reasons are simply trying to conserve a remnant of a Critically Endangered vegetation type.

Much the same way as an archaeologist, palaeontologist, or ethnobotanist might correctly stand in the way of a road or other development through an extremely important Stone Age midden which is not just “any old midden”; or, a road cutting with extremely important fossil evidence – which is not just “any old cliff face”; or, a population of a naturally harvested species such as Sceletium or one of the Buchus where the development will undermine a local community’s access to the resource or possibly threaten the species’ pollination biology by reducing the population by too much – and it is not just “any old succulent” or “any old fynbos species”.

Likewise, this specific site is is also not just “any old fynbos” – it really is of extremely high local, regional, national and global conservation significance (again – for a number of reasons) and here is one of the very few opportunities South Africa has to conserve a representative portion within a National Park and potentially within a World Heritage Site in future extensions to the existing CFRPA-WHS. It is also thoroughly accessible to a high number of Cape Flats schools and already serves as an invaluable education facility.

This is a real opportunity for people to make a significant contribution to long term conservation of a Critically Endangered habitat. The 2% which is being bandied about by those who are lobbying for a shady woodland instead of Cape Flats Sand Fynbos) equates to around 20 hectares of Critically Endangered habitat.

Many (if not most) of the remnants of this decimated and fragmented habitat (Cape Flats Sand Fynbos) are actually smaller than 20 hectares.

Twenty hectares (the area currently under plantation) – added to the existing core fynbos area at Tokai Park – will greatly improve the ecosystem functioning and biodiversity patterns and processes. There are a number of other degraded areas that might serve as zones which can be upgraded to wooded parkland.

As a Cape Town resident and also as an ecologist, I would far rather see Capetonians looking actively for ways to support authorities such as SANParks and SANBI, CapeNature and the City of Cape Town – people who are trying darn hard to look after and advertise our spectacular but rapidly dwindling biodiversity and together find solutions to deal with the crime and other issues that afflict us all everywhere.

If you would like to support SANParks and the South African National Biodiversity Institute in conserving this heritage, please head over and sign this letter of support for SANParks. It’s the right thing to do.