South Africa’s national flower is under threat from climate change, upping the ante for thousands of people working in the protea industry.
If global warming trends continue as they are doing, the country’s famous fynbos plant kingdom, including the flagship protea, will be pincered between advancing grassland and Karoo vegetation, NMU botanist Professor Richard Cowling said.
“Only fynbos in high mountain refuges will survive and many species including proteas will be wiped out.”
On another front, in the Sneeuberg around Nieu Bethesda, winter snowfall is declining, causing grave concern to farmers who rely on snowmelt to replenish valuable groundwater resources.
On the coast, Urban Raptor founder Arnold Slabbert said, kudu were ranging beyond their arid Karoo habitat into increasingly dry areas around Nelson Mandela Bay.
And in the metro itself, the flamingo-covered pans previously dotted across Parson’s Vlei have not contained water for years.
Perhaps most obviously of all, the water supply in the western region of the Eastern Cape is being squeezed ever tighter, Stellenbosch University climate change specialist Prof Guy Midgley pointed out.
Before the rains eventually came at the beginning of September the combined level of Nelson Mandela Bay’s dams had dipped to just 17.4%.
This week the figure stood at 54% but amid more dry weather and howling winds levels are dwindling again.
Once hard to pinpoint, now clearly just the tip of the iceberg in a world under siege, local examples of climate change illuminate the new 1.5C° Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Cowling said that as the climate warmed tropical grassland would spread from east of Port Elizabeth westward into the fynbos belt, and the invasion would mean more fires.
Combined with the grassland’s westward march, the arid succulent Karoo would be pushing from the hinterland towards the coast, he said.
“So except for those species that survive in refuges on high slopes of the Kouga Mountains, for example – it’s not looking good for fynbos or our national flower.”
Stern said winter temperatures were getting warmer in the Sneeuberg and there were fewer falls of snow.
“The snow settles and sinks in to replenish our underground water, a crucial resource for us. There being less snow the water table is dropping and farmers are regularly having to extend their pipes to draw out of their boreholes. Clearly it’s climate change and it’s a huge concern.”
Slabbert said as coastal veld dried and opened up, kudu and warthog were ranging out of the Karoo and pushing out bushbuck and bushpig.
“Kudu never occurred in Port Elizabeth but now they’re on the edge of Bluewater Bay.”
He said he used to have to wear gumboots to cross the saturated Parson’s Vlei flats north of Bridgemeade but now the whole area, including five pans formed centuries ago by wallowing buffalo or elephant, was dry.
“I visited the biggest pan 23 years ago and there were about 300 flamingos on it. When I went back it was dry and it has been ever since.”
Midgley said the fire and drought pattern in the Eastern Cape reflected the essence of climate change.
“Climate change is a process and in this case declining humidity and rainfall and higher winds and temperatures are ensuring more frequent and intense droughts and fires.”
Flower seller feeling the effect
Proteas were always a moneyspinner for flower seller Sheila Jayiya, but fires have ravaged her supply chain.
“I always had proteas. Everyone wanted them and they earned me the most money.
“But since the fires it’s very hard to get them,” she said.
Jayiya, 68, said she had been selling flowers outside the First Avenue KWIKSPAR in Walmer for 26 years, relying on stock from a farm outside Port Elizabeth and further afield.
“I put my two children through school with the money I earned selling flowers, especially the proteas. People want them for funerals and their houses, and during the big matches like in the World Cup all the foreigners were here and they wanted them.
“Now, because there are few, they are very expensive.”
She used to be able to buy a bunch of five proteas for R25 but now, when stock did become available, she was lucky if she got three for R30, she said.
“I used to earn R1,000 a week from selling flowers here.
“Now the money is next to nothing.
“I know about climate change and the fires.
“When I see them [fires] on the TV I know it is going to burn the fynbos and soon there will be no proteas left.”
Protea consultant Dr Gerhard Malan said the protea industry employed about 3,000 people directly and supported about 15,000, including dependents.
The industry was based on more than three million hectares of land, principally in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape, with businesses focused on fresh-cut, dry-flower and foliage production.
Malan said he agreed that climate change was already resulting in more erratic weather and that this might get worse.
“But I’m not convinced that it will be all bad for the proteas.
“It might be just that different patterns of vegetation and farming will emerge.”