Preserving a gem of biodiversity
TWO FAMILIES PRESERVE A GEM OF BIODIVERSITY
THIS is a story about two remarkable families and their extraordinary love for nature. It is about the generosity and altruism of Charles and Julia Botha of Durban and the long-standing conservation efforts of the Kunhardt family from the Howick area.
And it is a story about the fast-disappearing living space for some very unique plants, insects and other creatures – including the beautiful Karkloof Blue butterfly.
There are only four tiny patches of grassland where the Karkloof Blue still clings to life.
One such place is Wahroonga, a small farm on the road between Howick and Boston in the Midlands.
Although it covers barely 40ha, Wahroonga is the largest space left in the world for the Karkloof Blue.
There are two other small farms in the Howick area where this butterfly still lives and the only other place it can be found is nearly 120km away at Nkandla, just south of President Jacob Zuma’s private homestead.
Earlier this week, the sun started to shine a bit more brightly for the future of the Karkloof Blue butterfly – and several more vanishing species – when Wahroonga was donated to Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife at no cost, to ensure its conservation future.
For 35 years, the Kunhardt family have opened their farm to butterfly enthusiasts, students and scientists who came here to watch and to study creatures such as the Karkloof Blue, the KZN dwarf chameleon, the Hilton Daisy, several rare orchid species and medicinal plants.
Though they were surrounded by cattle pastures and a “green desert” of timber plantations, the Kunhardts deliberately refrained from keeping cattle or planting timber at Wahroonga.
“When my father purchased Wahroonga in 1980, he understood the delicate ecosystems and made efforts to have them protected,” says Martin Kunhardt, who has since moved to the Eastern Cape.
Determined
But now that the remaining members of the family have decided to move on, his sister Rose was determined that if they sold the farm it had to go to the “right buyer”, who would continue to protect this globally unique environment.
This is where Charles and Julia Botha of Durban come into the picture.
The Bothas, nature lovers and authors of a series of books on how to bring butterflies and nature back into suburban gardens, had been looking for several years to buy or lease a retirement cottage in the Umlalazi Nature Reserve near Mtunzini.
For various reasons, their efforts took much longer than expected.
Then, quite recently, they heard that Ezemvelo staffers and stalwarts Peter Thomson, Adrian Armstrong and Andy Blackmore were trying to raise funds to ensure long-term protection for Wahroonga.
So the Bothas offered to buy Wahroonga from the Kunhardts for a substantial but undisclosed sum and donate it to Ezemvelo.
In return, the Bothas have been granted a long lease on an old nursery site at Umlalazi for a retirement cottage.
“When we kick the bucket, the cottage and any improvements will revert to Ezemvelo,” Charles explained at a handover celebration at Wahroonga this week.
Thanking the Bothas and the Kunhardts, Ezemvelo acting chief executive David Mabunda praised the families for their “magnanimous and noble” act of “giving” towards the future of nature conservation.
At a time of increasingly strained state budgets and rapidly expanding human development, Mabunda said the days of buying up large areas of land for conservation had gone.
“We will have to turn increasingly towards philanthropists,” he told the Bothas. “What you have done will go down in the annals of conservation history. And if the Kunhardts had turned Wahroonga into a cattle farm all those years ago we would have lost this wild-flower wonderland.”
Mabunda said that to ensure the long-term future of the Karkloof Blue butterfly and other species, Ezemvelo might have to knock on the door of the neighbouring Sappi timber plantation group and other landowners to create corridor linkages to other remnant habitat patches.