Cape Town - No one is sure of the exact date, but it was around 1850 that farmer Pieter Albertyn shot the last hippo of the southern Cape, near the bottom of Africa.
In 2009 his great-grandson Dirk Human released a pod of five hippo into a large vlei on his farm, just a few kilometres from Cape Agulhas.
The hippos came from Lake St Lucia in northern KwaZulu-Natal.
“Because my groot-oupa shot the last hippo, maybe I had a duty to bring them back,” said Dirk.
The hippos have since had two calves in the wetlands that form part of the Nuwejaars River system.
Eland, hartebeest, bontebok and Cape buffalo have also returned.
“We’re slowly moving towards restoring the natural systems as they existed in previous centuries,” Dirk explained on his farm where he makes his wine called Black Oystercatcher.
“The hippos will keep the channels in the wetlands open and help keep the vlei ecology healthy. They’re a symbol of what we’re trying to do for the whole region.”
The Agulhas farmlands today are some of the most productive in the country, yielding wheat, barley, dairy and vineyards. But 200 years ago the rolling hills and extensive wetlands used to teem with wildlife on a scale that rivaled East Africa.
It was colloquially known as the “Serengeti of the South”.
In 1689 traveller Isaq Schryver noted a herd of 1 000 bontebok on his journey through the Overberg. In 1673 a shipwreck survivor was killed by an elephant. Locals still sometimes discover elephant tusks and rhino skulls in the sandy soil.
Hunters destroyed most of the large fauna and exterminated the bloubok and quagga. The bontebok almost followed soon after. If it weren’t for a small group of farmers, this close relative of the blesbok would also be extinct. By 1837 only a few small herds remained. In that year farmer Alexander van der Bijl rounded up the last 17 bontebok on Earth and protected them on his farm. Their numbers have grown to safe levels.
Like the farmers 200 years ago, Dirk Human and 25 other land owners – with the Elim community – are doing their best to re-establish the region’s biodiversity, while also creating job opportunities based on harvesting of fynbos, alien vegetation removal, wetland rehabilitation and eco-tourism.
Called the Nuwejaars Wetlands Special Management Area, the group have committed about 460km2 of their private land (worth about R1 billion) around Agulhas National Park to conservation-minded agriculture.
About a half of this land is in its original, natural state. All the farmers have title deed restrictions to ensure best practice conservation principles are maintained. Even if the farms are sold, the new owners are obliged to follow the same principles in perpetuity. The national government intends to sign it off as the first private protected environment in the country, and use it as a model for other farming areas.
Agulhas is one of the most biodiverse areas in South Africa. But scientists have warned that the region could be hit hard by climate change. So maintaining corridors of natural ecosystems will allow fauna and flora to move and adapt.
The region includes the 230km2 Agulhas National Park and has about 2 500 species of plants, roughly 300 of which are found nowhere else on Earth.
Thirty-two species are threatened with extinction. In some places the concentration of endemic plants is unparalleled.
“The park has one of the highest botanical diversities per unit area in the world,” former Agulhas National Park manager Etienne Fourie once told me. “It’s vital for conservation of lowland fynbos.”
He explained that on the slopes of the Soetanysberg there are seven fynbos types – each with hundreds of species – in a 90km2 area.
Some species – such as the bashful sugarbush (Protea pudens) – occur in just one or two places.
There are 230 bird species, including over 21 000 water birds (about 9 percent of those in the Western Cape) on Soetendalsvlei, the most southerly lake in the country and one of the largest.
Significant populations of blue crane and Stanley’s bustard – both vulnerable – occur on the inland plains. Vleis, estuaries, rivers and wetlands are home to at least 18 species of frogs and toads, including the critically endangered micro frog, the endangered Cape platanna and western leopard toad, thought to exist only near Cape Town.
Freshwater fish include the Cape kurper, Cape galaxias and Nuwejaar’s Redfin Minnow, all threatened by degradation and alien fish such as bass.
It will be a long time before anyone sees a herd of 1 000 bontebok roaming the Agulhas plain, as Shrijver did 300 years ago, but with the national park, Dirk and the Agulhas farmers are laying the foundations for a natural, sustainable future.
l For more, see www.nuwejaars.com or www.blackoystercatcher.co.za
Ramsay is a photojournalist focusing on southern Africa’s protected areas. Partners include Ford, Goodyear, Cape Union Mart and K-Way. For more see www.yearinthewild.com - Cape Times