Have the GM and GRDM forgotten?

This is an open letter to the Western Cape minister of infrastructure, Tertuis Simmers, and the mayors of George Municipality (GM) and the Garden Route District Municipality (GRDM).

- Wilderness resident Dr Arne Witt, an international co-ordinator of invasive species management at the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International, writes:

Wilderness falls within the Garden Route Biosphere Reserve, which includes the Tsitsikamma, Goukamma and Robberg Marine protected areas, the Wilderness Lakes Ramsar Site, the Garden Route National Park (GRNP), the Nelson Bay Cave, the Langkloof Valley and St Francis and Jeffreys Bay. The GRNP is an integral part of the Cape Floral Region Protected Areas World Heritage Site. The Cape Floral Region (CFR) is one of the world's six floral kingdoms, and the only one entirely contained within a single country.

1 736 plant species threatened

Incredibly, the CFR makes up less than 0.5% of the area of Africa, but is home to nearly 20% of the continent's plant species. Just under 70% of the estimated 9 000 plant species in the CFR are endemic - that means they occur nowhere else on Earth, which is why it has been identified as one the world's 35 biodiversity hotspots.

Sadly, 1 736 of these plant species are threatened and 3 087 species are of conservation concern. The main drivers of this biodiversity loss are climate change, habitat destruction and invasive alien species. We are facing what has been termed the sixth major extinction.