African Wildlife & Environment Issue 85

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

For conservation to thrive, as it must for future human health and wellbeing , we need not only to be all -inclusive but also to present a unified front to be able to ensure government does the right thing. Because we are fractured, we are weak and thus have no clout. Today there are just too many puffed-up personalities, so that forming a unified front for a conservation imperative is like trying to get a bunch of 10-year olds to play structured soccer! But all is not pessimistic, and recently I note an increasing number of black people being more and more interested and participating in nature matters. What an excellent sign for the future! Before continuing with my own journey, and my passion for people and trees, I must, in all fairness, make mention of one national attempt at compiling one consolidated, list of common names for South African trees. This was by a ‘committee of eight’ under the auspices of Val Thomas - this resulted in the publication of the Sappi Tree Spotting Lifer List; published in 2004 by Jacana Media. Meanwhile, running parallel to this attempt at producing one unified list of common names, there was and still is the Dendrological Society of South Africa that has not chosen to use the ‘standardized’ names. Today this Society has assumed the role of ‘keeper-of-the-current National-tree-list’. Their latest publication, Pocket List Of Southern Africa Trees (Briza, 2014) has ~1,000 entries that now include a greater number of additional species - shrubs and/or ‘herbaceous’ climbers (since all entries do not meet the original criteria that De Winter et al . proposed). Thus, to me, the fact remains that from the outside there seem to be at least two opposing groups that divide the Tree Peeps’ community, which is a great pity and in fact, to put it bluntly, a complete nonsense! Divided we lose! Before continuing, let me again emphasise that being able to identify trees in the field with some precision does take skill and perseverance - but brings joy and satisfaction. To be effective one does need a basic understanding of vegetative morphological features which, enhanced with a moderate memory, will greatly assist you in the journey.The net result is that you will derive a lot more joy from your forays into the field because increasingly you will recognise more and more different species and as my then 10-year-old daughter wrote in a poem on trees (in 1978):

severely restricted the conservation movement. For me a golden opportunity for South African Tree Peeps to come together as a whole was in 1966, after the publication of Sixty-Six Transvaal Trees (by De Winter, De Winter and Killick) in which they, for the first time, included a numbered National Tree List of nearly 750 species ( one common list by number – not by common name!). What happened thereafter was a flurry of a renewed interest in our trees, with people, mostly in the old Natal and Transvaal, going into wild areas and attaching National Numbers to trees (some of which can still be seen in the Kruger National Park today - along the road from Skukuza to Lower Sabi). But this fad did not have a long life, although it stutters on even today. In my view Tree Peeps want a name, not a number! Before 1966, we South Africans already had a flourishing but small TREE SOCIETY, almost entirely Johannesburg focussed , but very active with a quarterly journal and a record of publishing books ( Tree and Shrubs of the Witwatersrand 1964, and on genera like Acacia , Combretum and Commiphora ), and there were also other excellent tree books available back then - including Les Codd’s Trees and Shrubs of the Kruger Park (being one classic that I still love and treasure). Also, the Wildlife Protection and Conservation Society of South Africa (now morphed into WESSA) was the premier national conservation organisation with ~25,000 members nationally - and a Natal Branch (of ~15,000) that was the tail wagging the dog. What happened over the next few decades was a weakening of the Society, an almost collapse of the Tree Society, and a fracturing of the NGO conservation movement generally - except for the Cape where the Botanical Society of South Africa held sway with headquarters in Kirstenbosch - with the main aim of conserving the flora of the Cape Floristic Kingdom (now Greater Cape Floristic Region) – a Society that itself is now in free-fall. Thus, if one looks at the National conservation movement in South Africa today the picture is one of rapidly declining volunteerism, and where this still exists it is mainly propped-up by older, white people, and it has a very weakly recognised voice when it comes to matters of national and/ or regional conservation significance (BirdLife seems to be the only Society that is arguably still viable, and possibly the Endangered Wildlife Trust - EWT?).

38 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 85 (2024)