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Beyond oblivion: Critical trade-offs necessary to balance biodiversity and community needs in South Africa

Conservationists can no longer neglect community needs in the pursuit of biodiversity, says SANParks executive conservation manager, Howard Hendricks.

All South Africans will remember 2023 when loadshedding truly hit home, exceeding all previous years and plunging the country into the equivalent of 72.6 days of blackouts. And also Cape Town’s Day Zero drought, which peaked in 2017/18 when Mother City taps came perilously close to running dry?
These are a couple of examples of what are sometimes called tipping points – moments of crisis that force us to re-examine how we do things. There’s a growing view that parts of our natural world, including the rich diversity of life that sustains our own existence, as well as resources like water, food and energy, may be approaching such points.

tipping points

We risk crossing environmental thresholds that may trigger irreversible changes to natural systems.
It’s a disturbing prospect, but one that also energises Dr Howard Hendricks. The South African National Parks (SANParks) managing executive for conservation, speaks of a state of mind he likes to call “obliviosis” – the word doesn’t exist but he defines it as “the mental tragedy of knowing something but doing nothing about it”.
When we were in the grip of “obliviosis”, tipping points serve as sharp prods, prompting us to change course. They are the impetus for us to talk, to map out more sustainable paths.

key presentation

Hendricks was sharing his thoughts ahead of his key presentation at the opening of 13th Oppenheimer Research Conference on Wednesday ((SUBS: Oct 9)). The annual conference in Midrand, Gauteng, continues through to Friday, bringing together around 450 experts from a wide array of environmental and natural science fields.

SANParks executive conservation manager, Howard Hendricks, is a staunch advocate for innovative conservation practices that move beyond ignorance and neglect of people’s needs. (Photo supplied)

Hendricks, whose responsibilities at SANParks span “the science, park planning and development, cultural heritage, wildlife management and area integrity management”, will be speaking on the topic “Tipping points – making some uncomfortable trade-offs”.
He said he aimed to offer the conference a broader perspective, hoping it will serve as a useful counterpoint to the more technical and stats-rich presentations he was expecting from many of the other presentations.
The idea was to get people thinking, including on such vital and all-encompassing subjects as the food-water-energy nexus, which concerns the inextricable links between these three essentials of life. And he will be sharing a few thoughts on what he considers to be one Kruger’s National Park’s most serious problems – snaring.

Several hundred confiscated snares, found or removed from wildlife by rangers working with all-women anti-poaching unit, the Black Mambas, in the Greater Kruger. (Photo: Ilan Godfrey / Getty Images for Lumix)

trade-offs

So what were the trade-offs? And why don’t they sit well with us?

Trade-offs may, for example, involve working with communities living in or near reserves, finding concessions or arrangements that help them better coexist with nature and conservation efforts.
It’s the kind of work Hendricks cut his teeth on when he first joined SANParks as a scientific officer, in 1994.
But before we delve deeper into all this, let’s go back to the beginning, or at least to Hendricks’s formative years.
Now a father of two twin daughters, he recalled his own childhood, growing up in Sir Lowry’s Pass village in the Helderberg area, in the foothills of the Cape’s Hottentots Holland Mountains.

CAREFREE DAYS: Growing up close to nature in the foothills Hottentots Holland Mountains, Howard Hendricks’ childhood was filled with adventure and wonder. It was only later, while at university, that his eyes opened to the harsh realities and inequalities that shape South African life. (Photo: Flickr)

Childhood adventures

What does he see as the most pressing challenges to ocean governance and marine life in the region?

Tuda flagged the discord between the policies and regulations of different countries and the reality that marine ecosystems spanned boundaries.

“The national borders we draw are merely lines on a map, but marine wildlife doesn’t acknowledge these divisions. What we truly need is to find a way to collaborate across borders and where possible harmonise the conflicting laws,” he said.

Understanding local people’s interaction with the ocean and implementing relevant policies was also vital.

Harsh realities

Things got a lot more serious for him when he finished school and started commuting to the University of the Western Cape, where he studied for a BSc in biology. From the window of the train, traversing the Cape Flats, he would see the shacklands. He became aware of the harsh realities of life; witnessing crime, and getting robbed himself a couple of times. These were all experiences that would shape his outlook.

Amid this the great outdoors assumed an even greater appeal.
Hendricks belonged to their own formed boys’ scout, the Owls, and when he and his mates were not getting lost, giving the mountain rescue club headaches, their adventures took them into high country, including hunting for (and finding) old Voortrekker wagon trails.

Mission

He said of his undergraduate studies: “I took an interest in social ecology, which is essentially looking at the environment from a human perspective. In my third year I was on a mission already, because I wanted to demonstrate that traditional knowledge systems can be used to spearhead science at a time when funding and knowledge were limited.”

At a science conference in the Karoo National Park, Hendricks won a poster presentation competition and without warning the following day found himself being interviewed for his first job by three men wearing khaki shorts and short-sleeves in the middle of winter.
The stoic SANParks panel comprised Dr Anthony Hall-Martin, Mr Nick Geldenhuys and Dr Peter Novellie. They liked what they heard and hired Hendricks.

Early career

He was put to work in the Richtersveld, finding mechanisms to reconcile the interests of biodiversity, conservation and the needs of the local people, in what is an extraordinarily hot, arid and mountainous corner of the country, a living laboratory of climate change.
Amid this, he was seeking to understand the interconnectedness between man and nature. He wanted to learn what was “required of both to actually thrive”.
In many ways, Hendricks is still doing similar work to this day, work which relates to his interest in tipping points and trade-offs.

This question of trade-offs is particularly relevant when considering South Africa’s energy landscape.

Energy transitions

Amid the clamour at the slow pace of the transition to renewable sources, South Africa is the world’s sixth largest producer of coal, among the top 10 countries for reserves of the fossil fuel, and derives up to 70% of its electricity from coal, said Hendricks.
While this dependency on coal “flies in the face” of concerns over carbon emissions, as our recent experiences of loadshedding remind us, “we also cannot afford an unreliable energy supply system”.
“We’ve seen how that has closed industries. We’ve seen how that affected schools, the healthcare system. So we somehow need to find a trade-off,” he said.
That might mean agreeing to continue burning coal while “we get the government and others to step up efforts in terms of procuring renewable energy” or finding alternatives like using enzymes to convert carbon emissions.
He stressed the process was not about creating winners or losers, or to achieve the “best in the world, but of striking a balance”.
It could help us stave off an energy supply tipping point while we sought alternative ways to deal with carbon emissions.

Balancing acts

Turning to his own field of expertise, Hendricks spoke of the trade-offs of having a national park, but allowing farmers to graze their cattle, sheep and goats in it.
He touched on the Richtersveld National Park, where he began his SANParks career.
This is an area blessed with biodiversity, where as much as 40% of the plant species are endemic.
The park was proclaimed in 1991 after long negotiations with the Nama people who continue to live there with their livestock.
“Evidence shows these farmers have been grazing their animals long before us, 2,000 years ago. So they’ve been able to adapt (to the area’s extreme heat)… to evolve with the system,” he said.
“The uncomfortable trade-off was to be able to say, ‘How do you use stocking rates? And how do you delineate grazing zones or grazing pathways as a way of finding a trade-off between biodiversity and pastoralism in this national park?’.”
Hendricks acknowledged the view that many would argue we “should not be having these goats and sheep in a national park”, but countered this with another view that drew on anthropological findings, that people had long been grazing their animals there and were “entitled to that area”.

success

Hendricks cited the Richtersveld National Park as a successful example of community engagement, compromise, and trade-offs.

The end result: a World Heritage Site that preserves culture and a history, as well as rare succulents. Where once there was only communal land, a park had been created, a source of “collective benefit for all”.

Hendricks also spoke about Kruger.
SANParks flagship reserve served almost as a pilgrimage site for its many foreign visitors; it was an immensely valuable resource, not least for the tourism industry.
Yet many of the nearly 3-million South Africans living near its 250km boundary were poor. Unemployment rates in the region exceed the national average and social services were thin on the ground.

 “Now, what does that mean for SANParks and Kruger? Obviously, this is why you’ll see that snaring is probably the highest strategic risk in managing Kruger National Park,” said Hendricks.

bushmeat

He appreciated the realities that contributed to snaring, including hunger; that it was a means of earning cash through bushmeat trade; and that it was often associated with a long-standing cultural practice.
At a recent snaring symposium, Hendricks got to hear that those who set snares are often called “community service providers”. However, he dismissed the idea that snaring was a viable way to “guarantee food security in the country”.

He spoke about the “thousands and thousands” of snares SANParks removed from Kruger each year and how teenagers and even younger children joined dog hunts and set snares.

Snaring around Kruger could easily become a tipping point if nothing is being done about it, added Hendricks.

A snare setup in front of an animal burrow in the Kruger. (Photo © Cape Leopard Trust)
Dead wildebeest — countering the snaring scourge is not easy. Unlike active hunting, which is easier to police, setting snares is inexpensive and silent, making it harder to catch those doing it. Once trapped in a noose attached to a tree, shrub or stump
Dead giraffe and recovered game fence wire that was used to set the snare. (Photo @ Ian Carbutt)

Reaching out

So, how do we educate people about tipping points? How do we reach them at the correct level?
“People only become interested in it when it affects them directly. Otherwise… it doesn’t become a priority for conversations,” Hendricks said.
He said he completely understood that people felt overwhelmed by the complexity of environmental issues.
“I’ve gone through my journey in life to realise the environment is not straightforward.”
He suggested that rather than getting bogged down in big words or becoming obsessed with conservation, that we find ways to establish connections with people.

If we do this we can “unlock the conversation around the interconnectedness between people and the environment”; we can then talk of tipping points and trade-offs.
“We must avoid having a biocentrism complex because that limits our own understanding of others, their values and what they need,” Hendricks said, returning to the example of snaring.

Mindset change

He called for more research to understand snaring and other practices and what drove these. And he noted that last year’s white paper on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, promoted the sustainable use of biodiversity in the country and a striving biodiversity economy.
“People do snaring… because they are excluded from conservation areas. They are prohibited, a form of fortress conservation,” said Hendricks.
He called for a change of mindset so conversations could follow about things that affected people directly.
“And then we need to find collective solutions… with the communities and with those that are actually doing it.”
A lot of work was needed and fundamental trade-offs were needed.
“Obliviosis is something that we should avoid at all cost.” – Additional reporting by Siziwe Hlongwa.

This story was produced with assistance from Jive Media Africa – science communication partner to Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation.