Land of the little Brown Jobs

- Dale Wright

This vast region covers nearly 32 per cent of South Africa, extending from around Cradock in the east across to the west coast and north into Namibia. It also hosts a number of Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) whose habitat either consists entirely of Karoo Biome or includes sections made up of Karoo scrub. These include amazing locat ions such as the Camdeboo and Karoo national parks, the Platberg Karoo Conservancy and the Anysberg Nature Reserve in the Little Karoo. There are also some IBAs tucked away in the far Northern Cape. These sites support a variety of South Africa’s threatened birds, including Martial and Verreaux’s eagles, Ludwig’s and Kori bustards, Blue Crane, Secretarybird and other iconic species. Of the region’s bird species, eight are endemic: Karoo