EKETANGA
FLORA AND FAUNA OF THE
KRUGER TO CANYONS
BIOSPHERE
(Information adapted from Kruger 2 Canyons/Learning
Centre - 2008)
GENERAL INFORMATION
OF THE AREA
Hoedspruit falls within the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere,
with widely diverse landscapes and altitudes ranging from 300 metres to 2,000 metres above sea level in the Drakensberg Escarpment, where
the plateau begins.
The
average rainfall differs significantly across the Biosphere, averaging from
368 mm per annum on the plains to eight times that volume on the plateau.
This results in a wide variety of flora and fauna to enjoy.
The
Kruger to Canyons Biosphere contains three major biomes, namely: dry savannah
woodlands, afromontane forest and afromontane
grassland.
A
rich distribution of large mammal species can be found in the dry savannah
woodlands, more than in any sub region in the world. This is mainly due to
the high nutritional value of the vegetation and the extensive area supporting
large populations of ungulates (hooved mammals)
and their associates (elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard), together
with rare antelope such as Tsessebe, Roan, Sable
and Hartebeest.
This
is also one of the last remaining habitats for the African Wild Dog in South
Africa. A big concentration of Giraffe is found in the central region between
the Letaba and Sabie rivers,
with the main concentration in the Klasserie Valley.
The
whole region holds up to 75% of all terrestrial bird species, 80% of all raptor
species and 72% of all mammals found in South Africa.
FLORA AND FAUNA
Similar
to the rest of the industrial world, South Africa has lost at least half of
its natural wildlife habitat, mainly due to industrial and commercial activities.
Shrinking
natural habitats lead to a reduction in the diversity of species present and
in overall numbers. The larger and more abundant species that are migratory
are particularly sensitive to habitat availability.
Research suggests that regretfully only about 6% of South
Africa is under official protection, falling short of the recommended ICU
(International Conservation Union) figure of 10%. The Government has announced
plans to increase the size of protected land.
This
region is positioned to contribute to the conservation of South African landscapes
because of the atypical interfaces between the ecosystems associated with
the escarpment and the savannah. The savannah ecosystem within the Biosphere
Reserve is not currently under threat and is one of the more resilient systems
in the country. Because of the size of the area that is protected its value
to conservation exponentially increases.
MAMMALS
The majority of fences on the protected
land of the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere have been removed to allow for free
movement of the animals in the area.
This larger tract of land is one of the few remaining savannah
habitats in both South Africa and the sub-continent, which allows the large
scale movement of fauna species. This is particularly important for a number
of mammals including the African Wild Dog (or Painted Wolf as it is also known),
which is an endangered species threatened with extinction due to both loss
of habitat and being hunted as vermin, the Elephant, Blue Wildebeest and Burchell’s
Zebra.
The
savannah core and surrounding zones are one of the few areas in the country
that still provide large enough habitats for these magnificent animals which
roam ranges of up to 300 kilometres and more.
The
Kruger Park involves its many visitors, taking part in the large scale census
and monitoring programmes, by reporting the sightings.
All
but six of the sub-continent’s 35 species of big cats are found in the Biosphere
Reserve. It is also home to one of the few remaining viable gene pools of
Cheetah whose estimated total number is 300.
Two
thirds of South African bovines are also found here.
It is also home to a diverse range of antelope species,
some of which are also threatened (like the Lichtenstein Hartebeest, actually
considered extinct until a group was re-introduced into the park). The Sable
antelope is also vulnerable due to loss of habitat and bush encroachment (which
changes the habitat from open canopy and long grasses, preferred by the Sable
antelope, to dense impenetrable thickets). Hunters also prize the Sable antelope.
The
smallest mammals are not to be neglected and can sometimes be seen whilst
on foot in protected areas. A special species is the Meller’s
Mongoose because of its evasive nature. There are relatively few endemics
but Juliana’s Golden Mole, confined to the Lowveld
savannah, is significant and the two species of shrew of which the Greater
Dwarf shrew is on the endangered list.
The
area has a number of bat species.
Another
problem imposed on the mammal population is their worth to the traditional
medicine trade. Both species of Rhino, black and white, were driven to near
extinction by the high price paid for their horns as an aphrodisiac. Elephants
were in danger because of the trade in ivory.
REPTILES
AMPHIBIANS
FISH
Snakes
are not overly popular with curiosity mingled with fear of the highly venomous
snakes, like the Black Mamba and Puff Adder.
The
African Rock Python is vulnerable because it is demand by the traditional
medicine market and reptile collectors.
The
plated lizards or cordylids are being studied more
extensively by international herpetologists. Nine of the cordylids
are endemic to the area.
Only
50% of South African frogs are found within the Biosphere. Generally frogs
are not considered to be of great significance, but they are extremely important
biological indicators because of their sensitivity to toxins in the environment.
There are seven that are endemic and only one species recorded as endangered,
the Golden Leaf- Folding frog. The African Bullfrog is one of the few frogs
that has economic value, because it is eaten quite
extensively locally.
Of the 57 fish species found in the Biosphere Reserve 32
out of 39 of the important species are of economic importance. Small barbells
are valuable aquarium species, while the larger are important for angling.
The Tiger fish is well known for the fight it will put up for the angler.
Also in demand amongst fly fishermen is the small scale Yellow fish, which
the Parks Board is breeding and re-introducing into the area. A catch and
release philosophy in angling is promoted.
BIRDLIFE
The
bird species within the Kruger to Canyon Biosphere are of great interest to
the local and international birding fraternity. Ninety percent of all raptors
and vulture species found in South Africa are in this region.
Of
special interest are:
The
Big Six: Lappet-faced Vulture, Saddle Billed Stork, Martial Eagle, Pels
Fishing Owl, Kori Buzzard and Ground Hornbill;
The
White Backed Night Heron;
The
African Finfoot;
The
Black Rumped Button Quail;
The
Beautiful Three: Knysna Lourie,
Purple Crested Turac and Narina
Trogon.
The
Peregrine Falcon is considered rare. Falconers favour
the bird and have been known to remove chicks from nests in protected areas.
Pesticides
also play a large part in their decline.
The
most southern populations of the Taita Falcon (a
new phenomenon locally) falls within the Biosphere Reserve and can be seen
fairly frequently by experienced birders. Their presence enhances the case
currently being made to have the Blyde River Canyon
recognized as a globally important area.
All
of the South African storks can be seen in the Biosphere area and all but
one is rare species. The White stork is also endemic to South Africa.
The
Cape Vulture is a vulnerable endemic of South Africa. It has the largest breeding
colonies along the escarpment cliffs, which have been declared a National
Heritage Site. This is the fourth largest colony of these raptors in the world.
Also
worth mentioning is that twelve owl species are found within the Biosphere
Reserve.
INSECTS
The animal kingdom is split into a number of divisions known
as “phyla”. The largest phyla is the Arthropoda containing all the invertebrate animals with hard
ecto-skeletons and jointed limbs. The Arthropoda
is divided into classes, one of which is Insecto
also known as Hexapoda, meaning six legged. This
feature distinguishes “insects” from other classes of arthropods such as Diplopoda (millipede), Chilopoda
(centipedes) and Arachnida (spiders, scorpions and
mites).
Insects
are not only the largest group of animals with a million or more species,
but the most successful. They inhabit every part of the world’s environment.
We
are seeing progressively less insect life, maybe due to insecticide application
for agriculture or health reasons. Or it may be due to the dry cycles we have
experienced over the past few years.
Despite dismal predictions it is a joy to see the activity
of small animal life. The army ants on their way to raid termite colonies,
millipedes (or in the local lingo “tshongololo’s”)
marking the ground with their duel row of legs, or black ground beetles with
their white warning spots and erratic gait, searching for dinner. Immature
sand lizards mimic these beetles, with hunched backs and gait.
Undoubtedly
one of our most commonly noticed insects is the dung beetle.
GRASSLANDS
Grass
is the ecological underpinning to the entire ecosystem. Grasses belong to
the plant family Poaceae (Gramineae).
It is one of the largest plant families with over 10,000 species world wide.
Just less than 1,000 species have been described from South Africa of which
about 300 are endemic to the region and just over 100 introduced.
This
genus family also contains plants such as sorghum, maize, rice, millet as
well as large plants such as bamboo. The bulk of the world’s food comes from
this family of plants. Meat comes from live stock that fed on grasses. Eggs
come from poultry that have fed on grain that comes from “grass”. Butter and
cheese comes from milk which comes from stock that fed on grass, or grain
from “grass”. Sugar comes from cane which is “grass”. There is hardly any
organic food item that doesn’t originate from plants, with by far the greatest
bulk of it originating from grass.
With
such a diversity of grasses there are species adapted to almost every terrestrial
habitat. In arid “pioneer” situations the grass forms tend to rely on seed
production to carry them over dry periods. Most of the pioneer grasses have
narrow leaves, or some other method of cutting down transpiration, and sharp
seeds that can lodge in bare ground. These grasses are unpalatable to most
grazing animals, thus increasing their chance of survival. Certain other grasses
rely on vegetative expansion. These “creeping grasses” send runners out to
an established base. If the runners encounter a suitable growing patch they
will send down roots from the nearest node, to establish another plant. This
growth form has low lateral growth, often with the bulk of their mass underground.
The leaves are usually tough and hard but the juicy root stock, in sandy soil,
is utilized by moles, rats and spring hares.
With
these grasses becoming more attractive to grazers, animal droppings and hoof
action further improve water filtration, nutrition and other conditions for
growth. Where grass plants survive through successive seasons in vegetative
form, they are termed perennial.
The
occurrence of perennial species indicates improved veld
conditions. With increased competition for light, the grass species grow taller
with more bulk and provide better soil protection. In many cases they become
less palatable with inedible stems, like the grasses used in thatching.
The
leaves of many of these tall grasses are only accessible to certain ungulates
with the necessary adaptations. The horns of both male and female sable antelope
and roan antelope, as an example, help part the long grass stems to reveal
the palatable leaves below. If the adapted species of antelope are missing,
these grasslands may become unutilized or “moribund”. Too much shading from
moribund material can smother plants and they will die off. Under utilization
of grasses is nearly as detrimental as over utilization, as there is a very
necessary relationship between grazers and grasses.
The
“coarse grazers” (like buffalo), will move through thick swathes of grass
opening it up for other species and in this manner each of the smaller animals
will successively shorten the grass further, making it suitable for the next
species.
The
various species of ungulate assist each other with this type of interaction
which results in ideal grassland management, producing a trampled mulch to
retain moisture and permit light penetration. Where this doesn’t occur the
use of mowing may be necessary. Burning destroys the valuable mulch and sterilizes
much of the area.
There
is little significance in numbers of animals at any one time but great significance
in the amount of time spent on an area by even a few animals. If you walked
one beast down regular route each day of the year (365 days) there will be
a well worn path at the end of the year. Alternately, if you walked 365 animals
down the same route only one day of the year, there would be no sign that
they had been there at the end of the year. You could even pass 5,000 animals
through the area for a short period without affecting the growth. The same
thinking applies to grazing. Regardless of the number of animals, moving herds
leave rest periods for the plants to grow. The damage of constant “nibble”
is caused by confining populations or animals “anchored” to artificial and
often badly sited water points.
The
sooner fences are removed from game areas the better.
CENTRAL LOWVELD TRIBES
Clans of the Bantu tribal groupings known today as Tsonga,
Sotho and Venda have inhabited the Central Lowveld
region since the first millennium. Carbon dating of pottery has shown settlements
in the Tzaneen foothills dating back to 200BC.
The
spoken language of the present day is mainly Sotho and to a lesser extent Tsonga (Shangaan).
The
natural drift south and eastwards of these people took generations, said to
have taken place at a speed of 22km per decade. It therefore took 600 years
to cover 1000km.
However,
once in the savannah regions, the rate of expansion accelerated, bringing
the first people to the lakes region of Central Africa around 2,500 years
ago. In a little under 3000 years the Bantu speaking people had colonized the
entire land mass of sub-Saharan Africa, bringing with them their settled farming,
an event unmatched in world history.
Central
to the overwhelming success of Bantu settlement patterns was the role of iron.
Evidence of copper smelting has been found in the Air mountains
of Niger dating back
4000
years, leading theorists to postulate that metal smelting technology
could have co-evolved in Africa and the Near East concurrently.
In any event the metal industry in South Africa with its complex geological
deposits of tin, copper and iron seems to predate that of the Zimbabwe plateau
industries.
The
people making up the majority of the local Tswana and Sotho cultures are not
of a common stock. The Sotho has roamed extensively across the lands now forming
Mozambique, Zimbabwe and the north of South Africa. They combined this tendency
to roam with an appetite for subjugating the peoples they found in their path,
who then took the Sotho name and perpetuated their itinerant lifestyle.
One
of the major ecological drivers of this constant state of motion has been
the harshness of the Lowveld environment, with malaria
and tsetse fly continually threatening settlers, the tsetse fly carrying a
sleeping sickness lethal to both mankind and cattle.
A
near continuous state of Zulu inspired warring in the Highveld also created
a constant stream of refugees into the region.
In
the last 400 years the commercialisation of slavery
by westerners trading from enclaves on the coast, such as Delagoa Bay (present
day Maputo) imbued the region with terror. These slave traders created a huge
demand for people to be exported to the sugar plantations of the new world
as forced labour. This demand was happily met by
both local and Arabic slave traders in the interior.
These
ecological and commercial imperatives placed increasing pressures on local
populations to find sustainable land and resources away from the trading routes
and slave traders. The higher lying lands of the Drakensberg
were tsetse fly free and well watered and, as such, were more or less continually
occupied. The more marginal lands of the Lowveld were repeatedly populated and de-populated and served
as a melting pot between different tribes eking out their survival. The modern
“Northern Sotho” people consequently represent a wide variety of geographical
and cultural origins.
As
an example the oral traditions of the local baPhalaborwa
tribe say that their forefathers came from Bokhalaka
(present day Zimbabwe) under the leadership of a chief called Malatshi, and to this day the tribe has an alternative name,
the baMalatshi.
It
is uncertain when the migration from Bokhalaka began,
but early Portuguese records show that during the 17th century
the tribes of the so called Monomotapa empire were
driven southwards by waves of Rozwi invaders from
the north. It is likely that this represents a continuation of earlier, similar
movements.
The
first known local settlement was at Sealene, which
is only three kilometers from the present town of Phalaborwa,
and about four kilometers from Loolekop, and here
they continued smelting iron and manufacturing hoes, axes, spearheads and
arrowheads.
The
kraal of the chiefs of the tribe was built on the slopes of the koppie Sealene, and this is a place
much revered by all baPhalaborwa. Over the centuries
25 chiefs and sub-chiefs were buried on this koppie.
The present chief still regularly conducts traditional ceremonies to these
ancestors. This koppie has been declared a national
historical monument
If
proof were needed that the Phalaborwa tribesmen
were dedicated iron workers, it must surely lie in the fact that they chose
to settle in this area. Black water fever and bilharzias were rife, compounding
the miseries of malaria and sleeping sickness, and the annual rainfall, at
an average of 450mm a year, was so low that they grew crops with difficulty.
Yet, despite these deterrents and the hardships they faced, they declared
that Phalaborwa was “better than the South” (the literal meaning
of the name). That suggests that the smelting and working of iron was their
main occupation, and a profitable one.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this
brief history of the area you are visiting
