It’s been a month that I’ve been based in Boschendal Wine Farm supporting the vision of the owners for a regenerative farm and hotel that can serve as a source of inspiration for people around the world on the possibilities of regenerating land and people while creating a sustainable business.
One of the key areas we are looking to address is the conservation of the local Fynbos, an unique ecosystem existent only in the southern cape region. It is so unique in its botanic value and biodiversity that the Cape Floral is considered one of the six plant kingdoms we have on the planet. The Cape Floral is by far the smallest of the six in area, but it is also the richest per square meter in diversity of plants. It is home for over 9000 different plant species, and although it covers less than 6% of the African continent it is home for half of the continent’s plant species, many of those medicinal plants that provided a living pharmacy to the people who lived in this region centuries ago.
Seeing the beauty and admiring the full exuberance of the Fynbos takes a careful look and time. It lacks the large trees of dense forests, and the animals that call this ecosystem home, are in great majority tiny insects and birds. Most of the lush biodiversity is under its bushy vegetation. The miracle of biodiversity of the Fynbos thrives in very poor sandy soils. As most of the forest areas in the Cape region were turned into agriculture, the Fynbos near the coast and on the edge of the mountains managed to survive mostly because soils are so poor that they are not suitable for agriculture. Men did find a way to disrupt this precious ecosystem in the mid 19th century, bringing in invasive pine trees from Australia and Europe, who managed to proliferate and grow on the mountain slopes, sucking in a big part of the precious water that the Fynbos used to slow down from the mountain springs and serve life on the grasslands and forests in the lower valleys. That’s the main challenge that Boschendal is overcoming with technical support of local NGOs and government initiatives, but no financial support. Here in South Africa it is called “alien clearing”, the labour intensive task of clearing off the invasive species and allowing the Fynbos to regenerate (video below). In a world that still sees carbon as the only value of natural habitats, funding the arduous work of removing large invasive pine trees and keeping the ground clear for the Fynbos pioneers to take over flips the common logic of a carbon finance restoration project in its head.
Last weekend I had the opportunity to dive deeper into this beautiful ecosystem spending a couple of days at Grootbos nature reserve. There, a four thousand hectares area of mainly Fynbos is being managed and protected with the financial support of high end hospitality and tourism on the onsite hotel. It functions as a private game reserve, with the unique value proposition that the safari you do here has no large animal sightings, but magnificence, unique flora and bird life. In order to attract guests from all over the world for a world class hotel and this unique safari experience, Grootbos turns the Fynbos into the main guest experience, from their botanical safaris to a guided visit to their art gallery where beautiful portraits of the Fynbos fauna and flora were commissioned to local artists giving guests a colorful experience of all the richness of this ecosystem. The sensory experience is completed with a tea tasting of Fynbos herbs and the best honey I have ever tried in my life made in three very different varieties.
In Grootbos the challenge of conservation goes hand in hand with fire management. Another unique aspect of this ecosystem is its symbiotic relationship with fire. Fynbos fire in natural occurrence does not spell destruction, but regeneration. The bushy vegetation develops over a decade in a succession of species until it becomes so dense and impenetrable that the plants slowly become dormant and stop producing new seeds. It waits until a spark in the dry summer to turn most of the vegetation into ashes so millions of dormant seeds can come to life again and the whole ecosystem is able to renew itself and restart the cycle of plant succession. All this in very poor sandy soils supporting a very diverse group of animals from insects, to birds and mammals, most of them small and adapted to find nutrients on this complex mini jungle of unique plants. In order to conserve and protect the private reserve while running the tourism operation part of the work done by the Grootbos foundation is the controlled fires. This is done in partnership with the local fire brigades and promotes the rejuvenation of the Fynbos in controlled fires that don’t put the local community and the hotel at risk.
Amy, our Grootbos guide, took us to a botanic safari of the area and showed the difference between areas who are in the process of regeneration after a fire and the ones who are being selected as the next areas for controlled fire management. You can even feel the spark of creative energy in the new areas blooming with flowers and pioneer species giving room to animals and bird life to mingle in their fresh canopies, whereas the areas that are reaching long periods without a fire seem stale and impenetrable. So dense and embraced in their own complexity that there isn’t room for anything new to bloom.
Watching the dance of singing birds enjoying the flowers I think of my own life experience and of many friends I’ve met in different parts of the human world. I am thankful for all the big fires in my life that cleared off the old and gave space to new dormant seeds and life possibilities to arise. I think of how my life would have looked if I had escaped all these fires untouched. I would likely be in my 40s similar to that thick impenetrable Fynbos. Completely entangled in my own decades of life experience with no room for new seeds and possibilities. Probably the most interesting people I’ve met in this life were more like Fynbos. Unique in their expression of life and ecology, diverse in ways of being and interrelations, growing in poor soil to find their own expression of life, only to get burned down again and regenerate in a completely new expression to start a new cycle.
The Cape Floral is the artistic rebel of plant kingdoms. Trying to simplify it down to carbon credits is like trying to use money as a metric for valuable art expression. We need to find other alternatives to value this unique ecosystem and all its gifts.
