South Africa, located in subtropical southern Africa between 22°S and 35°S, boasts a range of different habitat types and an ecologically rich and diverse wildlife. The country is bordered by Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe to the north, Mozambique and Eswatini (Swaziland) to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the east and south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, with a coastline extending for more than 2,500 km (1,600 mi).
The interior of the country consists of a large, nearly flat, plateau with an altitude of between 1,000 m (3,300 ft) and 2,100 m (6,900 ft). Winters are mild in coastal regions, particularly in the Eastern Cape. The weather pattern is also influenced by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. In the plateau area, the influence of the sea is reduced, and the daily temperature range is much wider; here the summer days are very hot, while the nights are usually cool, with the possibility of frosts in winter.
South Africa is a beautifully diverse country, not only in terms of culture, but also in wildlife. You could spend months in SA and not see it all.
The country experiences a high degree of sunshine with rainfall about half of the global average, increasing from west to east, and with semi-desert regions in the north-west.
The south and south-western parts of the plateau, at approximately 1,100 to 1,800 m (3,600 to 5,900 ft) above sea level, and the adjoining plain below, at approximately 700 to 800 m (2,300 to 2,600 ft) above sea level, is known as the Great Karoo, and consists of sparsely populated shrubland. To the north the Great Karoo fades into the drier and more arid Bushmanland, which eventually becomes the Kalahari Desert in the far north-west of the country. The mid-eastern, and highest part of the plateau is known as the Highveld.
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The climate of South Africa is influenced by its position between two oceans and its elevation. Cold and warm coastal currents running north-west and north-east respectively account for the difference in climates between west and east coasts. This relatively well-watered area is home to a great proportion of the country's commercial farmlands.
Topography of South Africa
Vegetation and Flora
A total of 23,420 species of vascular plant has been recorded in South Africa, making it the sixth most species-rich country in the world and the most species-rich country on the African continent.
The most prevalent biome in the country is the grassland, particularly on the Highveld, where the plant cover is dominated by different species of grass; fires, frosts and grazing pressure result in few trees occurring here, but geophytes (bulbs) are plentiful and there is a high level of plant diversity, especially on the escarpments.
Vegetation becomes even more sparse towards the northwest due to low rainfall. There are several species of water-storing succulents, like aloes and euphorbias, in the very hot and dry Namaqualand area. The grass and thorn savannah turns slowly into a bush savannah towards the north-east of the country, with denser growth.
There are few forests in the country, these being largely restricted to patches on mountains and escarpments in high rainfall areas and gallery forests, and much of the plateau area is covered by grassland and savanna. The karoo occupies much of the drier western half of the country; this area is influenced by its proximity to the Atlantic and has winter rainfall.
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The vegetation here is dominated by dwarf succulent plants, with many endemic species of both plants and animals.
Fynbos
Fynbos is a belt of natural shrubland located in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces with a unique flora dominated by ericas, proteas and restios. This area is part of the Cape Floristic Region.
The World Wide Fund for Nature divides this region into three ecoregions: the Lowland fynbos and renosterveld, the Montane fynbos and renosterveld and the Albany thickets. The Cape Floral Region Protected Areas is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a group of about thirteen protected areas that together cover an area of over a million hectares.
This is a hotspot of diversity of endemic plants, many of which are threatened, and demonstrates ongoing ecological and evolutionary processes. This region occupies less than 0.5% of the area of the African continent yet has almost 20% of its plant species, almost 70% of the 9,000 plant species being endemic to the region.
The Fynbos vegetation consists mainly of sclerophyllous shrubland. Of special interest is the pollination biology of the plants, many of which rely on ants, termites, birds or mammals for this function, the adaptions they have made to the fire risk, and the high level of adaptive radiation and speciation.
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The Mediterranean climate produces hot, dry summers, and many of the plants have underground storage organs allowing them to resprout after fires. A typical species is the silver tree, which grows naturally only on Table Mountain.
Fynbos vegetation in Kirstenbosch
Wildlife
South Africa’s diverse geography, encompassing deserts, forests, mountains, grasslands and coast, supports an astonishing variety of wildlife. Kruger National Park alone has 16 different vegetation zones fed by six rivers, sustaining a multitude of game including 10,000 elephant, 20,000 buffalo and endangered species such as black and white rhino, wild dog, cheetah and lion.
Some 297 species of mammal have been recorded in South Africa, of which 30 species are considered threatened. The Kruger National Park, in the east of the country, is one of the largest national parks in the world, with an area of 19,485 square kilometres (7,523 sq mi) of grassland with scattered trees.
It supports a wide range of ungulates including Burchell's zebra, impala, greater kudu, blue wildebeest, waterbuck, warthog, Cape buffalo, giraffe and hippopotamus. Elsewhere in the country there are gemsbok, alternatively known as oryx, nyala, bushbuck and springbok.
There are seventeen species of golden mole, a family limited to southern Africa, five species of elephant shrew, many species of shrews, the southern African hedgehog, the aardvark, various hares and the critically endangered riverine rabbit. There are numerous species of bat and a great many species of rodent.
Primates are represented by the Mohol bushbaby, the brown greater galago, the Sykes' monkey, the vervet monkey and the chacma baboon. Smaller carnivores include mongooses, genets, the caracal, the serval, the African wildcat, the Cape fox, the side-striped jackal, the black-backed jackal, meerkats, and the African clawless otter.
With its diverse habitat types, South Africa has a wide range of residential and migratory species. According to the 2018 edition of The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World, 849 species of bird have been recorded in South Africa and its offshore islands.
The common ostrich is plentiful on the open grassland and savannah areas. Some birds breed elsewhere but migrate to South Africa to overwinter, while others breed in the country but migrate away in the non-breeding season.
There is a rich fauna of reptiles and amphibians, with 447 species of reptile recorded in the country (as compiled by the Reptile Database), and 132 species of amphibian (compiled by AmphibiaWeb). South Africa has the richest diversity of reptiles of any African country. Amphibian diversity reflects the many diverse habitats around the country.
Some animals occurring in South Africa are classified as "endangered" or "critically endangered".
Cheetah in Kruger National Park
Deforestation in Africa
Deforestation is affecting Africa at twice the world rate. According to the University of Pennsylvania African Studies Center, 31% of Africa's pasture lands and 19% of its forests and woodlands are classified as degraded. Africa is losing over 4 million hectares (about 9.9 million acres) of forest per year, which is twice the average deforestation rate for the rest of the world.
While deforestation in other parts of the world is mainly caused by commercial logging or cattle ranching the leading causes in Africa are associated with human activity.
Worldwide, almost 80% of the total deforestation is caused by agricultural production. One of Africa’s biggest cash crops, cocoa, is responsible for forest clearings across the continent. Nearly three-quarters of the world’s cocoa is produced in four African countries: Côte d’Ivoire - the world’s single largest producer, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon.
Another cheap and highly versatile and very profitable resource in Africa is palm oil. The continent accounts for 24% of the world’s palm oil, the majority of which is cultivated in the Central African country Cameroon. The expansion of this cash crop to meet global demand had devastating effects on the continent’s forests.
Only 24% of African forests are subject to long-term management plans, facilitating illegal logging and mining and thus the exploitation of timber. These practices have drastically accelerated the rate of destruction of primary forests.
An important driver of Africa’s deforestation is charcoal. Here, this inexpensive resource is the main cooking fuel for urban populations and, as these grow and demand for charcoal increases, deforestation intensifies.
The increase in life expectancy, combined with the decreasing infant mortality, and high fertility rates, make the continent’s population the world’s fastest growing, with an annual growth rate of nearly 3%. Population growth is listed as one of the main causes of deforestation in Africa.
Deforestation in Africa has devastating impacts on the continent’s climate, ecosystems, and biodiversity. Many of the consequences are related to the continent’s ability to withstand the climate change challenge. Cutting down trees would reduce the forests’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide and generate rainfall, exposing territories to severe droughts and worsening the ongoing water crisis that has plagued Africa for decades.
Furthermore, a lack in soil cover would expose the terrain to soil erosion and degradation. It would also intensify the impact and frequency of floods. Indeed, forests act as sponges that soak up rainfall brought by tropical storms. When heavy rainfall occurs but there are not sufficient trees to absorb the water and anchor the soil, flooding is more likely to occur.
But the climate is not the only factor affected by deforestation. Biodiversity is also highly compromised by this practice and animals are some of the biggest victims, as they suffer habitat loss and lack of food.
Rescuing Africa’s forests is crucial in order to maintain the country’s economic productivity and save it from the devastating consequences of global warming.
Deforestation in Africa
Conservation Efforts
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Africa contains more restorable lands than any other part of the world, with 393 million hectares of restoration opportunities for the Great Green Wall of Africa alone.
The Great Green Wall Initiative, an ambitious plan was launched in 2007 to plant millions of trees across an 8,000km-long corridor in the Sahel to rescue the extremely vulnerable region from the devastating consequences of climate change. Planting trees, experts believe, could moderate temperatures, wind patterns and soil erosion as well as increasing humidity for agriculture.
The best way to avoid the consequences brought about by phenomena such as deforestation is to stop the destruction of forests in the first place. In the example of Africa, solutions include the regulation of the logging industry, the development of forest protection schemes and a variety of policies addressing human activities that promote this practice.
Furthermore, attempts to deal with deforestation in the continent cannot ignore the problem of population growth. Certainly, governmental corruption will make things more difficult. A huge step forward came at the COP26 in 2021, as the DRC President Félix Tshisekedi and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson endorsed an ambitious 10-year agreement on behalf of the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) to protect the Congo Basin rainforest.
oNgoye Forest
oNgoye Forest, also known as Ngoye or Ngoya Forest, is an ancient coastal scarp forest, protected by the oNgoye Forest Reserve in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. The forest of almost 4,000 ha covers an extensive granite ridge that rises from 200 to 460 metres above sea level.
The Zulu king Mpande is the first known person to have afforded protection to oNgoye Forest in the 1800s. The area became an official conservation area in 1992.
Rare trees include Giant umzimbeet, Forest mangosteen, Forest waterberry, Giant pock ironwood, Zulu bead-string, Natal krantz ash, Natal elm and the Pondo fig. Besides the Pondo fig, another six species of Ficus occur.
Edge and interior sites were chosen that were homogeneous with respect to habitat physiognomy i.e. influences of habitat structure and complexity were insignificant. There were no statistical differences in bird species diversity between the forest edge and interior.
However, there was significantly greater species turnover at the edge. The difference in bird species composition between the forest edge and interior was due to various edge-effects: removal of dead wood for firewood, soil compaction by cattle, and generally greater levels of disturbance.
We question the wisdom of the generally applied edge-effect principle in the conservation of forest biodiversity.
Forest Cover Increase
A recent example of this phenomenon is presented in the work of Poulsen and Hoffman (2015), who examined aerial and ground-based photographs to estimate long-term changes in the distribution of forests on the Cape Peninsula of South Africa.
As shown in the table below, examination of the aerial photographs revealed there was an overall increase in forest cover of 65% between 1944 and 2008. And with respect to the ground-based repeat photographs, Poulsen and Hoffman report finding “an overall decrease in cover of more than 5% of visible rock and sand” (indicating more vegetative cover).
In discussing their findings, Poulsen and Hoffman state “the aerial and repeat ground-based photograph datasets have shown that there has been a significant increase in the number of patches of forest as well as in forest cover on the Cape Peninsula since 1888 when the earliest repeat photos were taken.”
In fact, as revealed in Table 1, overall forest cover has increased by more than 65 percent since 1944. As for the cause of the observed forest increase, Poulsen and Hoffman note that “increases in woody vegetation cover have increasingly been attributed to increases in elevated atmospheric CO2 levels,” though they say it is difficult to establish that link here because “there has been no research on the effects of elevated CO2 on South African indigenous forest taxa.”
A more likely cause, in their view, is fire exclusion; yet that conclusion may be somewhat shaky, considering the fact that they report mean fire return intervals have declined from 31.6 to 13.5 years since 1975, which decline should not have favored forest growth.
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