Protea Inligting in Afrikaans

DURATION OF PROJECT: From: 01 January 1991 To: 31 March 2001 (revised from 31 Dec. 01)

South Africa has some 24 000 plant species, of which about 8600 are found in the Cape Floral Kingdom at the southern tip of Africa. Some 1410 (60%) of the 2370 Red Data Book plant species in South Africa are found in the Cape Floral Kingdom, even though it occupies only four per cent of the area of the subcontinent.

Despite the high richness of the flora and the enormity of the threats, the general public of southern Africa is largely unaware of floral conservation issues. How can the general public best be educated and involved in botanical conservation?

Furthermore, there are too few taxonomists to revise the flora; too few conservationists to locate rare populations and campaign for their preservation; and, too few ecologists to provide comprehensive data of a general nature. Surprisingly, there are very few amateur naturalists to fill these gaps, although these have made considerable discoveries. Conservation rests squarely on knowing what is where and what the threats are. Can the general public be used to map the species, provide essential ecological data, and to mount search and rescue campaigns?

One possibility for combining both education and data collection is an atlas project. Based on the Australian bird atlas, Stephen Hopper initiated a "Banksia Atlas" project in 1984, which ran for three years and was considered a great success. The South African bird atlas has proved extremely popular, and prospects for a plant atlas project look good.

The Proteaceae, with the alpha taxonomy reasonably complete, have been selected as a suitably widespread plant group with considerable public appeal, and as a group relatively safe from commercial exploitation (versus bulbs, succulents, aloes, cycads, etc.). The distribution of protea species richness is strongly correlated with that of other major plant taxa and the family comprises some 10% of Red Data Book plant species (30% of species have RDB status) in the Cape Floral Kingdom. The distribution of proteas on the subcontinent also coincides with the most densely populated areas in the region, assuring public involvement.

A ten year period is required for the project since Proteaceae require 4-8 years to flower after fire. A considerable proportion of any area at any one time may be younger than six years old.

1. Primarily the Protea Atlas Project aims to encourage amateur involvement in botany. The ultimate objective is to stimulate public awareness and enjoyment in the veld, engender a conservation ethic and encourage participation in other conservation activities. A high profile should be maintained by publicity of range extensions, new species/hybrids/subspecies, local threats identified during atlassing and by organising outings and courses in atlassing and plant identification.

2: Obtain detailed distributional data to ascertain species distributions and conservation status.

3. Obtain distributional and seasonal data on pollination, growth, flowering, fire-survival strategies, and age to maturity, so that guilds of species requiring similar conservation strategies can be identified.

4. Obtain data on threats to specific species such as alien invasives, agriculture and flower harvesting, so that priority conservation strategies can be ascertained.

The Protea Atlas Project officially stopped accepting amateur data on 31 March 2001.

Some 58 811 Sight Record Sheets (or localities) where atlassed, amounting to 244 068 records of proteas, submitted by 478 atlassers. We estimate that with atlassing teams, over 1 000 people contributed to the atlas project, excluding ancillaries who joined walks, hikes and trips in which atlassing was a focus of the excursion. In addition to the protea species, some 810 records of 251 different hybrids (or crosses) were atlassed, and 1 779 common names were recorded for proteas.

Details of atlassers, statistics relating to atlassers and achievements can be found in the Protea Atlas Web Site (www.nbi.ac.za/protea) or the Protea Atlas Newsletter 51 (appended).

How complete was our coverage?

Analysis of new records from data submitted show that we effectively completed atlassing at a 1:50 000 grid scale (25X25km² or quarter degree grid) at 40 000 SRS or in May 1999. However, at an eighth degree grid scale (12X12km² or EDS) extrapolations show that we would have completed atlassing at 80 000 SRS (or by extrapolation at data input levels over the past year, by November 2002). However, new data for existing herbarium records reached zero at 55 000 SRS (in December 2000). Of the 5 903 EDS herbarium records compiled at the start of the project, we failed to find 1 479 – or 25%, although we reached 9 356 EDS atlas records. Some of these may be due to local extinction, some are bad taxonomy / curation, but without collecting more field data it will be impossible to verify just why a full quarter of herbarium localities could not be relocated by atlassers.

[for graphs see PAN 51:6 or the web;
“zero” herein has been taken as 1 new record per 500 SRS (or 0.002 nr/SRS)

This was the key documentation to the Protea Atlas Project, produced in 1991. Permission to use parts of the manual have been requested by several other atlas projects and by projects requiring map work. The manual, together with an introductory brochure, a pad of Sight Record Sheets, two field notebooks, an atlas ruler and a Protea Atlas Newsletter (PAN), formed the Atlassing kit, sent to those expressing an interest in the project and a honorarium to cover costs.

Some 51 quarterly Newsletters were produced – 12 during the run-up phase of the project. These kept atlassers, interested people and sponsors, aware of progress and priorities. They also provided keys, identification aides, general information and provided atlassers with a medium for communicating their feelings, queries and frustrations. The bulk of these are available electronically on the web.

Two editions of SASOL Proteas were produced. One in 1995, with a second edition - using Protea Atlas Project data (both maps and common names) - in press for 2001.

q The Friends of the Helderberg Nature Reserve are finalizing their Proteas of the “Helderberg Basin”.

q OUTRAMPS (Outeniqua Tramps atlassing group, based at the herbarium at George) are busy with a pocket guide to the proteas of the Garden Route.

The Interim Distribution Maps (IDM) were effective in improving atlasser involvement and providing a focus. The following IDMs were produced:

The Natural History Museum (London) product Worldmap is available free to atlassers. There are two versions of this data:

§ Cape. This summarizes the Protea Atlas data at a eighth-degree grid scale (12X13km “squares”, or EDS). Various versions are available, summarizing progress from pre-atlas to current (July 2001) data. This software allows for the identification of conservation options, as well as summarizing patterns of rarity and species richness. These data have been made available to Biomap and is thus available on the Worldwide Web at www.sa-isis.co.za, together with other South African biodiversity data.

§ Africa. This summarizes the herbarium data for the whole of Africa at a 1^o resolution (ca. 100X100km squares).

Written by Nigel Forshaw, this ACCESS database allows atlassers to capture their own information. Once captured (and automatically checked by comprehensive data checking procedures and online help menus), data can be e-mailed, ftp-ed or sent by disc to the Protea Atlas Office. Towards the end of the project almost 30% of data were submitted via this route, resulting in a considerable cost and time saving. Captured data can be viewed in variety of formats, including maps using the shareware ARCEXPLORER (a Geographic Information System package allowing roads, railways, nature reserves, rivers and contours to be illustrated with the atlas data). It is available on CD at a cost of R100.00c. This programme was part of the planned cybertracker palmtop data loggers being developed by Western Cape Nature, but this project was shelved when the planned extension of the Protea Atlas Project was cancelled.

The Protea Atlas Website now contains over 20 Mb in over 2 000 files of text, graphics and photographs. Information on Proteas and the Project is displayed in a visually appealing format. It is linked to our sponsors as well as to other environmentally-oriented web sites. We have had over 12 700 hits since its launch in March 1998.

q Protea Atlas Project Sight Record Sheet Data Base and ARC-EXPLORER (for those still interested in collecting data).

q Protea Atlas Project data requiring confirmation, checking or herbarium specimens;

We are indebted to Nigel Forshaw for maintaining the site and regularly updating the web. He also arranged for the site to be situated at World Online. The site will be continued for the foreseeable future.

We have had articles in many newspapers and magazines. These have dealt with interesting news, trips and courses. The electronic version of the country's dailies, Independent Online, had a link to our Website. Statistics on these have not been kept.

Numerous radio interviews were given, including weekly updates via Kirstenbosch Media Dept on Protea Atlas outings and happenings. Statistics on these have not been kept.

Hats, peaks, T-shirts, golfing shirts, sweat shirts, and pants sporting the Protea Atlas logo were produced. A Protea Atlas Pack Badge was also produced. These were very popular.

Numerous field trips to nature reserves, unexplored areas, hot-spot areas and to farms at the invitation of land-owners were undertaken. These involved:

q Weekday trips (159) – attended by our weekday teams – for roadside and short walk atlassing, mainly to areas unlikely to be visited by the average atlasser.

q Weekend trips (138) - to more remote and mountainous areas, involving hiking, climbing, 4X4ing, and exploring, chiefly in search of under-atlassed species or unatlassed areas.

q Field trips (longer than three days: 15) – these were targeted at especially remote areas, and generally involved camping, extensive travelling and a much pre-planning, often by local atlassers.

q Annual Get-togethers (7) were held in under-atlassed places with exciting proteas to bring together atlassers, but also to train and standardise atlassing and, just as importantly, to ground-truth and identify problems with atlassing techniques and procedures

In addition to the trips run by the office, regional co-ordinators also ran weekend and camping trips to areas within their region.

We were especially fortunate to have – in addition to regular atlassers – the services of several botanists, especially Simon Gardiner, Gek Hoon Koo, Adrian Mohl and Pindar Sidisunthorn, who helped free of charge during the hectic last six months of the project.

Over 27 talks on Protea Atlassing were given to any organization requesting this.

At least 22 atlassing courses have been given to interested reserve teams in Western Cape Conservation, WESSA, Working for Water (mainly High Altitude Team), South African national Parks, Mountain Club of South Africa, Botanical Society Branches, and the general public. No details of participants have been kept, but over 300 people have been trained.

Over 16 Protea Identification courses, open to the general public, have been given (during spring and autumn) at either UCT or Kirstenbosch.

These exclude trips, courses and talks done by co-ordinators during recruitment, for which we do not have comprehensive statistics.

We visited (some 42 trips) most of the annual flower shows that were staged in the western and southern Cape during the Protea Atlas Project. We helped with protea identification, obtained information of species localities and common names, and enlisted volunteers. For four years we designed posters of atlassing and proteas relevant to each flower show. These were donated for use in the local libraries, information centres and museums once the flower shows were completed. Additional events at which we manned stalls include several Humansdorp Fynbos Festivals, Flora’93 and CMC Festival of the Environment.

We annually manned stalls at the Botanical Society Annual Plant Sales, which became the Kirstenbosch Garden Fairs.

All enquiries were dealt with as soon as possible, with personal attention a priority. Identification of proteas and advice on filling in data comprised the bulk of these communications – chiefly by letter and email.

Recruitment was combined with talks, courses and flower shows. Media recruitment netted interest, but yielded few atlassers on its own. Atlassers required intensive training, either by atlas staff or by other atlassers.

Some 1 455 people expressed an interest in the Project. Of these, 20% did not express any further interest in the project. A further 54% ordered kits, but did not send in any data. Some 478 (32%) sent in data, with 97 atlassers sending in more than 50 SRS and 12 atlassers more than 1000 SRS. The top 10 atlassers sent in 52% of the data.

During the early years vehicles were hired from the UCT vehicle pool for official activities. WWF-SA donated a Toyota 4X4 which was used for most of the life of the project. Mazda donated the use of a 4X4 for the final two years. The Toyota has clocked 427 580 km and the Mazda 61 147 km.

The purpose of the awards is to encourage participation and set ambitious targets amongst our keenest atlassers. The following have been presented to atlassers for outstanding contributions (details can be found in PAN 51 or the web pages):

Reimbursement was automatically calculated by the data capture routines, based on new data at the EDS and visits to remote and targeted areas. Typically only 12% of monies awarded were claimed, the rest serving as incentive and reward in itself.

The project is fortunate in having had a dedicated band of volunteers who helped around the office. The move from UCT to Kirstenbosch saw a large changeover in volunteers, but generally office volunteers ranged from 3 to 9 during the project. Among the tasks performed by the volunteers has been: checking data capture, checking locality details, providing summary statistics, artwork, batch and mailing runs, maintaining the slide collection, compiling indices, filing, editing, and proof-reading.

Additional staff were employed to capture herbarium data, to capture extra SRS information (e.g. Additional Remarks Box (ARB) and other subsidiary data such as dominant species) and to help with office jobs.

Rate of data input for the project (see web) showed a significant increase during the last six months of the Protea Atlas Project. However, these data do not reflect the rate at which data was received by the office. A considerable backlog was received during the last six months when atlassers submitted outstanding data.

Some 58 811 Sight Record Sheets (or localities) where atlassed, amounting to 244 068 records of proteas, submitted by 478 atlassers. The geographical location of these sites can be viewed on the web.

The Common Names database stands at 1778 entries. These have been published in the newsletters.

As not all herbarium data have been captured to date, it is difficult to evaluate our milestones. But we have:

q Two extinct species rediscovered; 2 confirmed extinct; 2 discovered to be extinct.

q Increased distributional ranges (some by over 100 km) for over 33% of species and additional significant populations within distributional areas for at least 33% more.

q Preliminary estimates are about 20 000 herbarium records of proteas, but many of these are duplicates, many more are from the same sites, and a significant amount cannot be located to more than a magisterial district. We now have more than 10 times as many records of proteas from almost 60 000 localities.

q The centre of richness for the Cape Floral Kingdom is no longer Kogelberg but Western Riviersonderend Mountains. Patterns of species distribution no longer resemble road maps but are biogeographical meaningful.

As the data were collected by amateurs and the project was funded by public funds, there is an open policy with regard to Protea Atlas Project data. Latest data have been provided to Western Cape Nature, with subsets to the Botanical Society, South African National Parks, Cape Town Metropolitan Council and ISIS. Data are provided for EIA and IEM on payment of a R50.00c extraction fee and R2.00c per record. Researchers obtain data free of charge.

q Cape Action Plan for the Environment (as one of the conservation planning layers);

q Renosterveld Conservation Project run by the Botanical Society of South Africa;

A review of Seasonal Data appeared in PAN 38, and can be viewed on the web. We have far more data than shown there, however. Our goal was more than 10 records per month per species. Of the 370 Western Cape taxa, we have not achieved this for any month for 64 taxa (the rarest of the Red Data Book species), some 113 species have less than 6 months with more than 10 records and a further 85 species have at least one month without 10 records. However, our data are significantly better than herbarium records.

Protea Atlas Project data currently allow an evaluation of threats due to agriculture, alien invasion and picking. In addition, the proportion of populations for any species that occur in conservation areas can be evaluated.

q Two extinct species could not be found (Leucadendron grandiflorum and Ld spirale) – two were! Two species could not be found during the 10 years of atlassing, including surveys of all known sites (Serruria aemula congesta and Se furcellata). Two plants of the latter are growing in the University of Western Cape nursery. They are thus formally extinct.

A list of species that occur in the nature reserves in southern Africa is available on the web.

A review of the picking of proteas was presented to SAPPEX in October 1996. There has been no request to repeat the review.

Evaluation of the threat of extinction can only be done with regard to historical data. However, only about half the taxa have had their herbarium localities computerized. These are being worked up for inclusion in the Protea Atlas. Coverages on land degradation by aliens and agriculture have been obtained from CAPE for the purpose of evaluating extinction rates once herbarium data are captured.

We intend holding in 2001 a workshop to review the Red Data Book status of our proteas.

The final official product of the Protea Atlas Project will be “The Protea Atlas”. This will summarise in book form the geographical, seasonal and threat information collected by atlassers. An electronic version is envisaged as well, to be packaged with the book, perhaps including an interactive identification key to the family and the web pages. The next step is to make mockups, obtain quotes and obtain funds for this stage of the project. “The Protea Atlas” was deliberately left out of the original contract with DEA&T and WWF-SA because costs would have been impossible to forecast when the project was initiated.
Publication in 2002 is planned.

Vegetation types in Fynbos
Interpolating plant communities in the Fynbos Biome to augment the new “Vegatation Map of South Africa” being produced by the NBI. This will combine Bruce Campbell’s structural approach with the Protea Atlas Project data to produce a map of protea-dominated structural vegetation types.

Family Tree for the Proteaceae
Dr Gail Reeves is compiling a family tree (cladogram) for the family. Together with distributional data, these will be used to compile a biogeography (of speciation) for the first time in the Cape Floral Kingdom.

Bayesian Statistics
Dr John Silander of the University of Connecticut has secured a $300 000 grant from the NSF and NCEAS to analyse the Protea Atlas Project data. The aim here is to explore the limits of modelling species distributions at a variety of scales to determine the scale-related effects of climatic and edaphic factors. This will see a GIS technician, modern computer and ARC/VIEW installed in the Protea Atlas Project offices for the next two years.

Climate Modelling
Using Generalized Linear Modelling we hope to fill in the gaps between the Protea Atlas Project data and extrapolate forward to predict changes suggested by the current climate models and backwards to investigate key climatic episodes affecting biogeography of proteas.

Red Data List Status
We intend holding in 2001 a workshop to review the Red Data Book status of our proteas. The purpose will be to pool available data (herbarium and atlas, and local expertise) and to upgrade the status to that of the new IUCN Red Data List categories.

A major failing of the Protea Atlas Project was to obtain herbarium specimens for formal taxonomical appraisal of our many and exciting findings. This was planned to be undertaken in an additional final two years of the project, but this planned extension to the project was curtailed. At least some of these records should be formally collected before the atlassers who discovered the populations die or the populations become extinct.

The Protea Atlas Project was very successful at involving laymen and creating an awareness of our flora. There are no local yardsticks to measure the project against – full evaluation will have to consider the political changes and public priorities during this era, as well as social and cultural attitudes to conservation and science. Apart from co-operative land-owners, local groups that assisted with the project (by obtaining contacts of farmers and interested parties for trips), we estimate that over 1000 people regularly participated in atlassing activities, although only 476 contributed data directly. The norm of the top 10% of atlassers contributing 90% of the data (actually 86%) is the norm.

The project was extremely successful at collecting scientific data. These data are considered the best in the world, and the selection by the USA Bayesian statistical group to use these data for modelling theoretical species distributions (under the NSF programme of strengthening statistics in biology) belies that fact. Moreover the data are being used to design optimum conservation areas for the Cape (under the CAPE programme), and are being used by both Western Cape Nature to evaluate development proposals, and by agencies doing Environmental Impact Assessments and Integrated Environmental Management proposals.

The Project will not be complete until “The Protea Atlas” is published. “The Protea Atlas”, which was not included in this contract, will be published during 2002. Funding will be sought for this.

Final Progress Report