Volume 7 • April 2011 CREW –National Overview he CREW Programme is a is growing each year, not only Tkey component of the South in the number of groups and REW, the Custodians of African National Biodiversity volunteers, but also in the C Rare and Endangered Institute’s (SANBI) Threatened collective knowledge of our flora Wildflowers, is a programme that involves volunteers from Species Programme. The pro- that is being built up bit by bit the public in the monitoring gramme was designed in 2003 as each volunteer improves his/ and conservation of South as a pilot to determine if civil her knowledge of local species. Africa’s threatened plants. society volunteers could help This ever increasing botanical CREW aims to capacitate a provide monitoring data on the capital is paying off in the data network of volunteers from status of South Africa’s plant that is being fed back to the a range of socio-economic CREW nodes to the national species. This kind of informa- backgrounds to monitor threatened species office. tion is vital as it is used to and conserve South Afri- update the Red List of South Currently we are updating ca’s threatened plant spe- Africa’s plants and also feeds the Red List of South Africa’s cies. The programme links into land-use decision making plants in order to release the volunteers with their local and conservation planning. As first online South African Plant conservation agencies and we enter 2011 CREW is in Red List in April of 2011. We particularly with local land its eighth year of implementa- have been struck by the large stewardship initiatives to en- tion. It is appropriate at this number of species that required sure the conservation of key stage to reflect on whether the updating as a result of CREW sites for threatened plant CREW Programme is achieving species. volunteers work—we have over its purpose. 700 threatened species that What is clear from the articles have to be reassessed due to presented in this newsletter fieldwork that has taken place is that over the years the over the past two years. Most programme has developed a encouraging of all is that a strong network of volunteers large number of the species spread across South Africa’s that CREW volunteers have threatened ecosystems, and been monitoring will become that the passion for plant less threatened once they are conservation of each of the updated as many new previously CREW volunteers is extremely undocumented populations have strong. The CREW Programme been observed and documented www.sanbi.org 1 by CREW volunteers. This by the current poor financial So watch this space—CREW indicates very clearly that the climate and are going ahead is going to continue to expand CREW Programme is achieving with plans to start a CREW and grow as there are many its aims of contributing to the node in the Eastern Cape in more threatened and rare plant monitoring and conservation of 2012. We are actively raising species that need our help. South Africa’s plants. funds for this Eastern Cape Project in which we will pilot Domitilla Raimondo Keeping this amazing network involving community members in (Threatened Plant Programme of volunteers going is a priority collecting plant specimens. Manager) for SANBI’s Threatened Species Programme, however, finding the resources to fund CREW is becoming ever more Contact details for CREW Group champions challenging. In the past year we Cape Floral Region have experienced ongoing loss of funding support that we have Caledon—Adriaan Hanekom come to depended on over the [email protected] last few years. This includes Darling Flora Group—Helene Preston funds from the Norwegian [email protected] ministry of foreign affairs which Friends of the Tygerberg—Hedi Stummer have support us since 2005 [email protected] as well as national government George Outramps—Di Turner funding that we used to receive [email protected] from SANBI. Harmony Flats Working Group—Sabelo Lindani The latter funding cut is being [email protected] experienced by all programmes Jacobsbaai—Koos and Elise Claasens and projects run by SANBI [email protected] as the institute has a large Mamre—Sophie Liedeman and Morgan Sambaba financial deficit that needs to Sophie: 021 576 1266 be cleared. Fortunately the Napier—Cameron and Rhoda McMaster Botanical Society of South [email protected] Africa (BotSoc), a major Nieuwoudtville (Indigo Development and Change)—Bettina Koelle partner in the implementation [email protected] of the CREW Programme, has been extremely supportive of Port Elizabeth—Clayton Weatherall-Thomas [email protected] CREW. In May 2010 BotSoc reconfirmed its commitment to St Francis/Fourcade Botanical group—Caryl Logie CREW by renewing the CREW [email protected] Memorandum of Agreement Stilbaai—Janet Naude with SANBI. BotSoc financially [email protected] supports the operations of Swellendam—Flora Cameron CREW in the summer rainfall [email protected] region and also pays for the salaries for two CREW KwaZulu-Natal coordinators. Boston—Christeen Grant or David and Barbara Clulow [email protected] or [email protected] A further benefit of the Highway—Andrea Abbott partnership with BotSoc is the [email protected] sharing of their enthusiastic administrator, Zikhona, with Mkhambathini—Alison Young the Cape Town office for three [email protected] days a week. In addition to Pondoland—Tony Abbott the support received from [email protected] BotSoc, the CREW Programme Umvoti—Sue Swan is currently actively seeking [email protected] funds particularly for the Underberg—Julie Braby implementation of CREW in [email protected] the Cape Floral Region. We are very confident that our funding Mpumalanga applications will be successful. Mpumalanga Plant Specialist Group—Mervyn Lötterter We have also not been deterred [email protected] 2 CREW—Cape Floral Region eading through the articles year. This gave us an indication Rsubmitted by the group that there might be many more just gave me so much inspira- species to be found as most of tion and made me realise how the field trips to this area re- fortunate we are to be working sulted in new records of threat- with such a dedicated group of ened species. Our key highlights people. for the season was new popula- One of the most exciting tions of Geissorhiza purpureo- projects for me this year was lutea in Riebeek Kasteel, a new establishing our demographic population of Ferraria parva in monitoring project. We are now Hopefield, a possible new spe- doing demographic monitor- cies of Marasmodes in the upper Breede River valley and Figure 2.—Moraea insolens finally ing for seven threatened plant seen in Caledon. species. The areas we are a new population of Moraea in- working in are Nieuwoudtville solens (a plant that I have been (Bulbinella latifolia var. doleritica wanting to see since I first saw and Euryops virgatus), Paarl it in the Moraea book some 12 (Argyrolobium angustissimum), years ago). Riverlands (Marasmodes de- In 2009 we recorded a new foliata), George (Disa procera population of Moraea vuvuzela. and Nanobubon sp. nov.) and St This species was named in hon- Francis (Brunsvigia littoralis). our of the FIFA Soccer World This has presented us with a Cup that took place in South great opportunity to start col- Africa last year. The name lecting long-term monitoring ‘vuvuzela’ inspired great inter- data to enable us to look at est in this species and the population trends and the im- Figure 3.—The centre of attraction pact of threats on the viability organisation that funded the in Worcester, Moraea vuvuzela. of threatened plant populations. naming of the species has also made additional funds available for a project to contribute to Our C-team focus for 2010 was a project at the Karoo National working in Piketberg and the the conservation of this highly Botanical Garden to build an Riebeek Kasteel/Riebeek West enigmatic species. CREW will ex situ collection of the spe- area. This area has not been be conducting surveys in the cies and develop a threatened well-botanised and our volun- Worcester area this year to try teers managed to record some and locate more populations of plant display in the garden. We interesting species the previous this species and also to initiate will also be engaging volunteers from Worcester and hopefully we will be able to establish an- other CREW group in the area. We have a new addition to the CREW family. Vathiswa’s beautiful baby girl was born in January and we eagerly await to see her and the baby soon. It seems we are in for an exciting year. There are many new exciting projects to focus on and I am looking forward to another brilliant year of CREW work. Many thanks to our dedicated volunteers for all the contributions you have made to CREW. Figure 1.—Our interns helping us do demographic monitoring in the Paarl Mountain Nature Reserve. Ismail Ebrahim 3 St Francis/Fourcade Botanical Group ur work since June 2010 Ohas been concentrated on an area north of Humansdorp, mainly on the farm Honeyville. In 1838 James Backhouse camped on Honeyville on his way to Hankey. He recorded 14 species and although we have found some of them, we remain on the lookout for the others. Our approach has changed and instead of looking at selected Figure 1.—Utricularia bisquamata Figure 2.—Insects caught by Dros- 1 ha plots and only recording found at Honeyville farm. era. the species in each site we are now building up a species list for the whole farm. There are various types of vegetation on Honeyville with mainly grassy fynbos dominating the area.