African Wildlife & Environment Issue 77 FINAL ISSUE

GOOD READS

Fynbos Manning, John (2020). Pocket Guide. Fynbos. Struik Nature, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Cape Town. Soft cover, 11x18 cm, 176 pp, illustrated in colour throughout with photographs, sketches and distribution maps. ISBN 978-1-77584 -695-6. R190.

Rhino wars Olivo, Silvana (2019). Zambezi Valley. The Lost Stronghold . Published by Camilla Singh, promoted by Helco Promotions (contact Helen Holyoake at helen@ helco.co.za.) Soft cover, 15x23 cm, B&W photographs, 372 pp. ISBN 978-1-71802-546-2. R295.

This is an historically important book about the battle to protect the black rhino living in the Zambezi River Valley, at that time the greatest concentration of this species in Africa. This is the story about how the 'last stronghold' became the 'lost stronghold'. Silvana Olivo, then 21, became the official Italian chapter of 'Operation Stronghold', and this is her account of her experiences in Zimbabwe of the rhino wars of the 1980s. Gangs of armed poachers with automatic rifles steadily wiped out rhino populations in Africa, starting in the west, then south of the Sahara to Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. By 1980 black rhinos, that had numbered around 65,000 in the 1960s, were down to 15,000. The onslaught then engulfed Zimbabwe, and the Zambezi Valley was seen as the last stronghold in that country. The war against poachers by heroic game scouts and rangers, who risked their lives for very little in exchange, was led by the legendary Glenn Tatham as the initiator of Operation Stronghold. The book reads like a thriller, as the pace of the emergency unfolds in Silvana's words, as she takes the reader through her experiences in the field. The aftermath of sickening slaughter of rhinos and the disturbing killing of poachers leaves the reader with a sense of outrage that this should ever have happened. But make no

This new addition to Struik Nature's pocket guide series features over 300 of the most spectacular and commonly-seen species from South Africa’s renowned floral kingdom – all in one handy, easy-to-use guide. There is a vast amount of information in the pages of this compact little book. The introduction describes the world of fynbos, detailing the origins, diversity, adaptations and conservation of this unique flora. The species are presented in detail, with each entry featuring a succinct description of the plant and its habitat, and comparisons with similar species and flowering times, as well as a full- colour photograph and a distribution map. There are interesting facts about each species, as well as a 'floral key', using symbols to denote main identifying features. The species are divided into ten distinct groups, and an illustrated floral key on the inside front cover gives readers a smart tool with which to identify species more accurately. More about the ingenious 'floral key': for each species there is a shortened code that describes the characteristics of the flower. For example, the code S3 P3 St3 O describes a flower with three sepals, three petals, three stamens and a superior ovary. The photographs, by the author and Colin Paterson-Jones, are superb, and this compact guide is an invaluable aid for anyone interested in South Africa’s astonishing floral treasures that are to be found in the south-western Cape Province.

8 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 77 (2020)