Building Biodiversity Knowledge: Mobilising Citizen Science

Abstract

South Africa enjoys a long history of biological exploration and documentation. However, until recently, much of this information remained inaccessible in herbaria, museums and libraries. During the 1970s and ‘80s, a strong tradition of cooperative research led to the rapid expansion of biodiversity knowledge through multidisciplinary biome and ecosystem projects, and through the preparation and publication of synthesis volumes and open access databases. Three projects – the Southern African Bird Atlas, the Red List of South African Plants, and the Custodians of Rare and Endangered Plants – are reviewed as models of cooperative citizen science initiatives, and the application of strategic opportunism in their implementation.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesisers, people who are able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

Edward O. Wilson (1998) Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge p 294

1 The Development of a Conservation Science Ethos

When the great Carolus Linnaeus was working on his revolutionary system of botanical classification (Genera Plantarum Linnaeus 1737; Species Plantarum Linnaeus 1753), he was able to examine the increasing number of botanical collections arriving in Europe from the far corners of the globe. One collection in particular excited his interest – that of the German physician Paul Hermann. Hermann was on a Dutch East Indiaman en route to Sri Lanka when the ship called into Cape Town in 1672. Here he made the first known herbarium collection of Cape plants (Gunn and Codd 1981). Hermann’s collection included 791 items. Linnaeus was astounded by the richness of the collection. He also recognised its historical importance. In his brief Flora Capensis, Linnaeus (1760) wrote:

In this land of the Cape of Good Hope in farthest Africa no botanist ever before had trod. Oh Lord, how many, how rare and how wonderful were the plants that presented themselves to Hermann’s eyes! In a few days Hermann simply and solely discovered more new African plants than all the botanists who ever before him made their appearance in the world.

The beauty and diversity of the South African flora has captured the attention of botanists for more than three centuries, but so too has its vulnerability to the impact of human activities. As early as 1658, the Dutch colonial government published a regulation prohibiting the cutting of yellowwood Podocarpus latifolius, a valuable hardwood, from the forests above Cape Town (Karsten 1951). During the late eighteenth century many botanists (Anders Sparrman, Carl PeterThunberg, Francis Masson) collected extensively in the Cape and had expressed their amazement at the diversity, beauty and fragility of the flora. By the late nineteenth century serious concern regarding threats to the Cape flora was noted by the founder of Australian botany, Baron Ferdinand Mueller, after visiting the Cape. In a letter dated 1895, to Sir Hercules Robinson, the High Commissioner of the Cape Colony, Mueller wrote:

The vegetation of South Africa is the richest in the world … special and peculiar plants are sure to be swept out of existence altogether unless special provision is made for their preservation. … these beautiful and remarkable plants will be unknown save by dried specimens preserved in State Herbaria.

Fortunately, Mueller’s grim prediction has not been realised. In the century following his call for action, much has been done in South Africa to describe, document, protect and promote its remarkable flora and fauna. In the first assessment of the proportions of major taxonomic groups falling within protected areas Siegfried (1989) estimated that more than 70% of the vascular flora (and more than 90% of amphibian, reptilian, avian and mammalian species) were to be found in the 582 publicly owned nature reserves which then occupied 5,8% of southern Africa. Today, much more detailed biodiversity statistics are available for South Africa. The country’s latest National Biodiversity Assessment (Skowno et al. 2019) reported that the protected area estate of South Africa now covers nearly 9% (108,000 km²) of the country’s land area, with three-quarters of terrestrial ecosystem types now having some form of representation. The marine systems have also received attention. In 2018, twenty new Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) were accepted for declaration, covering 5% of the country’s marine territory. At species level, South Africa’s birds and reptiles are the best protected of the seven taxonomic groups assessed in the NBA, with more than 85% of these species considered ‘Well Protected’, marginally lower than Siegfried’s 1989 estimates, but still very high by any international standard.

2 How Did this Happy State of Biodiversity Conservation Arise?

There is no simple answer to this question, but the early fascination with the fabled Flora Capensis by explorer-naturalists – Carl Peter Thunberg, Anders Sparrman, Francis Masson – of the eighteenth century (Gunn and Codd 1981), and a succession of hunter-naturalists – Gordon Cumming, Cornwallis Harris, Courtney Selous – in the nineteenth century (Pringle 1982; Beinart 2003), might have had something to do with the growth of a strong natural history tradition in the country. British settlers and colonial administrators arriving in the Cape from the early 1800s brought from Europe a fascination with the unusual – establishing private ‘cabinets of curiosities’ and public museums and herbaria. The first natural history museum established in Africa south of the Sahara was the South African Museum in Cape Town in 1825. By the late nineteenth century South Africa had five natural history museums – more than all other countries of Africa combined. This interest in natural history, and in hunting, mobilised the creation of the first protected areas and national parks in South Africa from the late nineteenth and through the twentieth century, continuing to this day.

By the mid-twentieth century, South Africa had a strong conservation culture, driven both by passion and by politics. But it lacked a shared vision and a focused direction. A new conservation agenda arose immediately following the Second World War, in the late 1940s and 1950s. The establishment of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) in 1948 provided stimulus to like-minded people around the globe. In South Africa, provincial parks boards and nature conservation departments were created during this period. In the early years, conservation on-the-ground was focused mainly on protected areas, managed by para-military ‘rangers on horseback’ (Steele 1968; Huntley 1978). Ecologists and conservation scientists had little influence on protected area management. In her comprehensive history of conservation in South Africa, Carruthers (2017) characterised the pioneer years (1900–1960) as the era of ‘protecting, preserving and propagating’.

Science entered the conservation endeavour with the development of an identifiable programme of ecological studies through the 1960s and ‘70s. Research programmes in national parks focused on ‘measuring, monitoring and manipulating’ – activities conducted somewhat in isolation from the broader academic and research communities of the country (Carruthers 2017). Significant changes came in the 1980s, when biodiversity science began to assert its role in the conservation of South Africa’s biota (Huntley 1989), with academic and government institutions offering both training and careers in the profession. Conservation research had emerged from relative obscurity to prominence in the increasingly visible and respected arena of the environmental sciences and within the context of the challenges of rapid socio-economic development (Huntley et al. 1989). Before examining specific models of successful project implementation, it is instructive to understand the origins of South Africa’s conservation science tradition.

3 The Emergence of Cooperative Approaches to Conservation Science

The first broad-based syntheses of South African conservation science were those of Davis (1964) and Werger (1978). These works provided benchmarks on the state of the art before the term ‘biodiversity’ had entered common usage. This was a time of major changes in approaches to biological research, strongly influenced by the International Biological Programme (IBP). Launched by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) in 1964, the IBP lasted for ten years (Worthington 1975). South Africa was a minor player in the IBP, but the excitement created by the introduction of ‘big science’ thinking, funding and action in biome projects in Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany and the USA triggered a series of national initiatives that played a significant role in laying the foundation of modern conservation science in South Africa (Huntley 1977, 1987; Carruthers 2017).

Carruthers (2017) describes the evolution of the country’s involvement in international environmental science, driven by the CSIR’s Cooperative Scientific Programmes (CSP) from 1975 to 1990, more specifically by the work of the CSP’s Ecosystems Programmes group. At the time, the IBP was given continuity by the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), and through the activities of IUCN commissions and of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS). South African researchers played an increasingly important role in these programmes, laying the foundations for much of the country’s current leadership positions in conservation science and action. The institutional history of this process has long been forgotten, but the principles developed through the CSP remain the cornerstones of success and merit consideration.

Established by ICSU in 1969, SCOPE focused on globally important environmental problems that ‘lend themselves to solution through collaborative multi-disciplinary research’. The philosophy can be traced through two closely linked streams in the development of conservation science in South Africa. The first embraced a holistic approach to developing a predictive understanding of the structure and functioning of South African ecosystems. Following the ‘big science’ model of the biome projects, and led by Brian Walker (then at the University of the Witwatersrand), the savanna ecosystem project at Nylsvley in the bushveld of Limpopo Province studied the flows of energy, water and nutrients through a savanna woodland (Walker et al. 1978; Scholes and Walker 1993). More importantly, the Nylsvley project provided a learning exercise in the management of large projects. This early experience guided the conceptualisation of other projects in fynbos, karoo, grassland and forest biomes. The pursuit of ambitious whole ecosystem computer-driven models soon fell away, and a much broader approach was followed to study and understand the nature, distribution, evolutionary history and dynamics of fynbos and karoo systems. These whole biome studies eventually led to a series of synthesis volumes (Cowling 1992; Cowling et al. 1997; Dean and Milton 1999).

The second stream in conservation science in South Africa was initially stimulated by the IBP but brought to focus by the various SCOPE initiatives. The programme examined specific ecological processes that cut across biomes – threats to species and ecosystems, the ecological impacts of fire, of invasive species, and of land transformation. The first project responded to the need for Red Data Books (RDBs) on the levels of threat being felt by plant and animal species. This caught the attention and support of taxonomists, conservation agencies, amateur naturalists and the national and provincial environmental authorities. The voluntary effort of academics led the way. Between 1976 and 1980, Ecosystem Programmes published the first series of RDBs for southern Africa, covering birds (Siegfried et al. 1976), mammals (Meester 1976), freshwater fishes (Skelton 1977), reptiles and amphibians (McLaghlan 1978), and flowering plants (Hall et al. 1980). All these early RDBs were published in the South African National Scientific Programmes Reports – a series initiated by the CSP to ensure rapid publication and free dissemination of the results of the projects it was coordinating. In the following decades, these pioneer volumes were succeeded by multiple revisions and far more detailed accounts covering a wider range of taxa.

The funding and coordinating activities of Ecosystem Programmes coincided with the emergence of conservation biology as a ‘self-conscious science’ in the 1980s (Soulé 1985). The thinking of scientists such as Michael Soulé, Jared Diamond, Paul Ehrlich, Peter Raven and others provided a fertile platform for debate and progress in the South African research community, most especially in progressing from studies in ecosystem structure to ecosystem function and dynamics. To accelerate the process, a series of international workshops was convened by Ecosystem Programmes. The format comprised an open symposium addressed by international and regional leaders on a chosen research question, followed by a field trip to South African case studies, and concluded with a three-day writing retreat. The first workshop addressed the determinants of the structure and dynamics of savanna ecosystems (Huntley and Walker 1982), followed by similar workshops on the conservation of threatened habitats (Siegfried and Davies 1982; Hall 1984), on nutrients in Mediterranean-climate ecosystems (Kruger et al. 1983), management of large mammals (Owen-Smith 1983; Ferrar 1983), on the ecological effects of fire (Booysen and Tainton 1984), the biology of invasive species (Macdonald et al. 1987), and on long-term data series (Macdonald and Crawford 1988; Macdonald et al. 1988) (Fig. 7.1). During the period 1975–1990, over 500 participants from 13 universities, five provincial departments, seven statutory institutes, seven museums and three NGOs were involved in the identification, study and implementation of results arising from projects coordinated by the CSP.

Fig. 7.1

Covers of some of the many synthesis volumes produced by the Cooperative Scientific Programmes during the 1980s

By the end of the CSIR-hosted and CSP-coordinated Ecosystem Programmes in 1990, a culture of multi-institutional cooperation in complex environmental research had been laid (Huntley 1987, 1989). These field research and synthesis processes consolidated knowledge and identified questions for further study, but more importantly, built a strong national and international science network that mobilised careers, introduced new thinking, and internationalised the results of South African and regional scientists (Carruthers 2017). It was the era of Wilson’s ‘synthesisers’.

4 Lessons Learned from the Cooperative Scientific Programmes

Three drivers stimulated the establishment of the CSP. First was the wave of international concern regarding the negative impacts of various environmental processes that had led to the launch of the IBP and SCOPE. The world, in the view of the scientific community, was faced by the crises of air pollution and acid rain, toxic and persistent chemicals, deforestation of tropical forests, the rise in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and of the ‘greenhouse gas effect’, loss of species and habitats, and other emerging global problems. Second was the recognition, by the then President of the CSIR, Chris van der Merwe Brink (1978) of these trends and their probable deleterious impact on South Africa’s growing economy. Third, the belief by the local science community that such environmental problems could not be solved simply by importing approaches and technologies from northern ‘developed’ countries. The IBP and SCOPE had provided a radically different philosophy to that prevailing in South Africa before the 1970s. The strongly hierarchical tradition of ivory-tower scientists working in silos, isolated from the end-users of research results, needed change.

The operational structure of the CSP evolved from a top-heavy committee system to a fairly informal network of working groups in specialist fields, gradually developing an ‘invisible college’ of like-minded collaborators. Workshops drew together generators of ideas and synthesisers of results, with steering committees facilitating decisions and allocating resources and ensuring open communication between participating stakeholders and the orderly progression towards agreed central goals. Projects had to meet four criteria:

• A multi- or inter-disciplinary approach;

• The cooperative endeavor of researchers from several organisations;

• New research approaches developing new skills, rather than following conventional prescriptions; and

• The commitment and active participation by decision-makers and end-users.

Towards the conclusion of the CSP, an informal evaluation of the activities of Ecosystem Programmes provided insights on the success factors, and failures, of the approach (Huntley 1987). Key factors and criteria for success included:

• The clear definition of the research objectives and the early development of conceptual models and testable hypotheses relating to their execution – developing what are now termed ‘theories of change’;

• Bringing together leading thinkers in ecology and environmental sciences through participation in international projects and national workshops – IUCN, SCOPE, IUBS, etc.;

• Bringing researchers together with the real-world end-users – the ultimate implementers of results – within an ‘invisible college’;

• Ensuring a good mix of idea-generators and idea-needers;

• Securing a critical mass of leaders and resources – but retaining an opportunistic approach to involve young ‘rising stars’;

• Developing trust and openness in neutral fora, and abandoning traditional academic and professional hierarchies;

• Adapting to flexible timetables and avoiding the ‘tyranny of logframes’ and permitting rapid responses to new challenges and opportunities;

• Avoiding data-rich, understanding-poor approaches to information gathering; and

• Facilitating the informal transfer of ideas, information, experience and learning, which often proved more effective than structured interactions.

The CSP approach was not universally accepted. A strong body of ‘blue sky’ academics was opposed to structured and coordinated projects, while some government institutions feared an overlap with their responsibilities by the applied nature of the CSP research focus. Without the vision and tenacity of some leaders within the network, the whole endeavour might have been disbanded during its formative years.

5 The Post-1990 Years – The Democracy Dividend

The major sea-change in South African conservation science and action came in 1990, coincident with, and strongly influenced by, the nation’s transition to democracy. This period – continuing to the present – is what Carruthers (2017) characterised as the era of ‘integration, innovation and internationalisation’. One must recall that the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in February 1990 triggered the most fundamental change in African politics since the independence events of the 1960s. While the 1960s had profound importance for those colonies granted independence at that time, the ‘winds of change’ (Macmillan 1960) did not reach South Africa for another 30 years. With democracy came the opportunity for South African conservationists to participate in the wave of new global policies and practices, such as those of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Global Environment Fund.

The dramatic political changes in South Africa progressed coincident to institutional changes at national level. At the moment when the CSIR Cooperative Scientific Programmes came to an end in 1989/1990, the National Botanical Institute was established through the amalgamation of the National Botanic Gardens of South Africa and the Botanical Research Institute to form the National Botanical Institute (NBI). The NBI initiated several new programmes in response to the global priorities identified by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992) – in biodiversity, climate change and land transformation. More specifically, NBI partnered with Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) in developing a Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, which was later accepted and approved by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2002. In turn, many of the targets of the GSPC morphed within the broader, all-taxa targets of the CBD’s Targets for Biodiversity, adopted at Aichi, Japan, in 2010. But once again, institutions had been changing, with the NBI broadening its brief by becoming the South African National Biodiversity Institute in 2004. In terms of its founding legislation – the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act (NEMBA 2004) – SANBI was legally required to monitor and report on the conservation status of species and ecosystems. What had been a rather informal arrangement – coordinated by CSP to produce and publish Red Data Books – became a SANBI responsibility vested in law.

Across this period of institutional change, new activities emerged to meet the demands of broader strategies. What had become clear during the heady days of the Ecosystem Programmes was the need for finer-scale data on the distribution, abundance and dynamics of the flora, fauna and vegetation of the country. The first-generation Red Data Books of the 1970s and ‘80s had identified large gaps in the knowledge base. The early assessments of invasive species, and the exploratory uses of systematic conservation planning indicated the need for a finer definition and mapping of vegetation, especially of those habitats that were poorly represented in or absent from the existing protected area system of South Africa. NBI, and its successor, SANBI, took their responsibilities seriously (Cherry 2005). Following the CSP tradition of collaboration among multiple institutions and across disciplines, NBI/SANBI embarked on several key information-gathering and synthesis projects. Three main thrusts brought focus to its activities.

First, as a consequence of its century-long role in plant taxonomy and herbaria, and the regional stimulus to floristic survey, inventory and electronic data-basing resulting from the SABONET project, NBI/SANBI produced updated checklists of the national, regional and continental floras (Germishuizen et al. 2006; Germishuizen and Meyer 2003; Klopper et al. 2006).

Second, it was recognised that the classic Veld Types of South Africa that John Acocks had single-handedly prepared based on decades of field work across the country (Acocks 1953), was at too broad a scale to serve as the base for advanced conservation planning. In 1990, NBI, with 94 contributors, initiated a 16-year project to classify, describe and map at a detailed scale, the 428 vegetation types occurring in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini (Mucina and Rutherford 2006).

Third, from 1990 and following IUCN guidelines, NBI/SANBI brought together the contributions of 169 botanists, both professional and amateur, to produce assessments for South Africa’s 20,456 plant species indigenous to the country (Raimondo et al. 2009) – as outlined later in this chapter.

Simultaneous to these three activities, an ambitious project to gather bird distribution data from six southern African countries was launched in 1987 by what later became the Avian Demography Unit at University of Cape Town. As described below, the largely volunteer contributions of over 5000 ‘citizen scientists’ generated a database of over seven million bird distribution records by the time of the conclusion of the first phase of the project and the publication of The Atlas of Southern African Birds (Harrison et al. 1997).

These were monumental efforts, involving hundreds, indeed thousands, of collaborators. The electronically accessible, geo-referenced data sets underpin floristic, avian and vegetation maps and descriptions as well as associated RDBs for selected taxa of terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems. They provide the basis for the successive National Biodiversity Assessments that guide modern environmental management in South Africa (Skowno et al. 2019). Here I describe the profiles of three citizen science projects.

6 The Southern African Bird Atlas Project: The Evolution of Citizen Science in Southern Africa

In early 1987, when large multi-institutional projects such as the Fynbos Biome and Savanna Ecosystem projects were at peak activity, supported by generous funding from government sources, a very different biodiversity research model was being launched within the Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Cape Town. A small team of enthusiasts embarked on an audacious mission to document the current distribution and seasonal movements of the 932 species of birds occurring in six southern African states – Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Ten years and seven million records of bird sightings later, the project concluded – in what was and remains one of the largest completed projects of its kind, anywhere (Harrison et al. 2008). Despite its modest beginnings and budget, the Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP) rapidly captured the imagination and passion of more than 5000 ‘citizen scientists’ across the region. Each volunteer recorded sightings of birds seen around their homes or on informal travels. The efforts of citizen scientists were supplemented by professionally-led expeditions to outlying regions that would otherwise not have been adequately covered.

The success of the project can be attributed to its simple but efficient and cost-effective three-tier operational model (Harrison 1992). At the base were the volunteer observers, mostly amateurs drawn from the general public, each submitting bird lists to a network of regional committees. These honorary regional committees, comprising well informed ‘birders’, vetted submissions for obvious errors, and forwarded the processed field cards to the project coordinator, James Harrison, based at what became the Avian Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Behind this structure was the power of the statistical skills and computer hardware of the Department of Statistical Sciences at UCT, led by the project’s conceptualiser, Leslie Underhill. A key strength was the protocol developed by statisticians which while simple for amateurs was designed to infer useful information such as the absence of certain birds and recording rates. Technical sophistication was matched by simplicity of application.

The network, in an era preceding modern social media, was kept informed on progress and priorities through a regular hardcopy SABAP Newsletter. The database consolidated records with a temporal and spatial resolution of monthly reports and quarter-degree grid cells. This was and remains SABAP’s simple yet elegant formula for success.

Given the dimensions of the database, it took a team of seven editors and 62 authors four years to compile the two-volume, 1500-page product of the project – The Atlas of Southern African Birds (Harrison et al. 1997).

Since publication and the electronic availability of datasets on which it is based, have become watershed resources for southern African ornithology. They provide fine-scale information on the general ecology, direction and timing of migration, and the seasonality of breeding of the region’s avifauna. The book provides an unmatched reference and baseline for monitoring, biogeography and conservation, and a stimulus to further research. The direct academic results include more than a dozen theses based on the project data. The impact on the competence, interest and confidence of amateur bird enthusiasts has been significant, as Harrison et al. (2008) note:

Not only did the simple yet scientific methods of SABAP give many birders a first introduction to how science works, but the scientific output from the project showed how small contributions could be amalgamated into a meaningful and impressive whole. This new perception of their role as citizen scientists helped many birders make the transition from the relatively straightforward activity of atlasing to the more challenging requirements of bird monitoring projects.

Although initially conceived by South African researchers and citizen scientists, SABAP has served as a model and driver for similar projects in several southern African countries, and in other taxa such as the Protea Atlas, Frog Atlas, Reptile Conservation Assessment, South African National Survey of Arachnida, and the Southern African Butterfly Assessment.

The first SABAP (now referred to as SABAP1) has been succeeded by SABAP2 which started in 2007. SABAP2 is even more ambitious than its predecessor (Fig. 7.2). It aims to move from a ‘snapshot’ of bird distribution to a ‘movie’ of ever changing distributions, without a fixed closing date. SABAP2 has proven a valuable tool for picking up range shifts that can be linked to climate change, and to tracking invasive species dynamics. As Harrison et al. (2008) conclude: “Collectively, the atlas projects represent a new era in biodiversity field research in the region.” SABAP2, now in its twelfth year of operation, has expanded into the umbrella African Bird Atlas Project, using the SABAP model across Africa (Lee et al. 2022). Key to the success of both SABAP1 and SABAP2 has been the collaboration of three distinct institutions and organisations: SANBI (governmental), BirdLife South Africa (NGO) and UCT (academic). This network overcame the challenges faced by so many conservation research and monitoring projects in Africa (human capacity, financial and technical resources, and implementing conservation recommendations). It is a model of an African solution to African problems.

Fig. 7.2

Coverage of the Full Protocol Cards submitted by citizen scientists participating in SABAB2 during the period 2007–2022. The expanded coverage of data collection across Southern Africa during SABAB2 is impressive. (Graphic prepared by Ernst Retief)

All these atlasing projects gradually integrated into the wider network and developing role of the NBI as it transformed into SANBI, contributed to the essential and vast evidence base for national biodiversity assessments, spatial development planning and the detection of responses of species and ecosystems to environmental change (Driver et al. 2005).

7 Threatened Plants: A Model for the Red Listing of Endangered Species

The early history of interest in and study of the South African flora has been outlined in the introduction to this chapter and detailed in many books and papers (Hutchinson 1946; Gunn and Codd 1981; Victor et al. 2016). A long tradition of indefatigable collectors filled our herbaria with fascinating material. By the 1970s South African herbaria held over two million specimens. But this treasure trove of information was almost wholly inaccessible to potential users. At the time, Bernard de Winter, the then Director of the Botanical Research Institute (a predecessor of the NBI/SANBI), saw the need for electronic access to the vast information held in the collections. De Winter had represented South Africa on IBP committees, and was no doubt inspired by the breadth and innovation of the IBP vision. Recognition must be given to him for introducing many new approaches to plant taxonomy in South Africa (Victor et al. 2016), and for initiating what was at the time a revolutionary project to create a computerised information system for the holdings of the National Herbarium in Pretoria. This was the Pretoria (PRE) Computerised Information System (PRECIS), the first of its kind in the world. In its early years, PRECIS used punch cards for data entry and enormously large and painfully slow IBM computer housed in the Department of Agriculture’s Head Office for processing. In the decades since PRECIS was established, the use of electronic data, including images of all type specimens of the flora of Africa, has become standard practice. It was the availability of computerised information on a national scale that made the second generation of Red Lists for South African taxa an achievable objective. Here I focus on just one, the Red List of South African Plants (Raimondo et al. 2009) (Fig. 7.3), which provides lessons for sharing across southern Africa.

Fig. 7.3

The Red List of South African Plants synthesised expert assessments of the country’s 20,456 indigenous species within five years. (Raimondo et al. 2009)

In their succinct synthesis of the critical success factors that resulted in the assessment of South Africa’s megaflora of 20,456 species being completed within just five years (2004–2008), Raimondo et al. (2013) concluded with seven key messages to help guide other large assessment processes:

• Establish a Red List team to coordinate and conduct assessments. The inputs of 169 professional and amateur botanists were coordinated by a dedicated full-time Red List team comprising a project manager, three ecologists and two support staff. The team ensured standardised application of the IUCN Red List categories and criteria. It provided continuity, cost-effective training, and the incorporation of the field knowledge of ecologists, of wide taxonomic expertise, and of strong computer literacy.

• Streamline the assessment of high numbers of species via automation. The availability of electronically accessible herbarium specimen data (backed by PRECIS and the results of SABONET) allowed rapid and automated assessment of 20,456 species in five years, assigning 9387 widespread taxa into the IUCN category of Least Concern (LC). Electronic specimen data prioritised 6000 taxa of restricted distributions that had never before been assessed. These species were targeted for further investigation. Electronic specimen data served as a first step in threat assessment to identify those species that were clearly widespread, abundant, and unlikely to be in danger of extinction.

• Develop a data management system that serves local conservation needs. The project had the benefit of South Africa’s PRECIS database which saved significant time. The data management system developed was more simplified than the complex and generalised IUCN Species Information System. It targeted local needs and linked directly to key information from PRECIS, in particular to spatially geo-referenced data for sub-populations of threatened species. This facility proved to be the single most useful dataset generated as part of the assessment process, and allowed intersection with other spatial information – such as vegetation maps, protected areas, topographic or climatic data, etc.

• Invest in using the IUCN system. In order to meet robust and testable criteria and standards for the conservation status of species and ecosystems, SANBI adopted the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria Version 3.1 (IUCN 2001). The IUCN categories and criteria provide a quantitative, objective system that can be consistently applied across a range of taxonomic groups worldwide. According to Raimondo et al. (2013): “The value of the data obtained as part of the threat assessment process for strategic, informed conservation decision-making outweighed the effort in capturing it.”

• Focus on relevant information. Quantitative assessments can be done with very little data. Most assessments were desktop assessments with only three basic information resources: taxonomic literature, electronic herbarium specimen data, and spatial land cover data. Threatened plant species tended to be concentrated in specific areas where high levels of endemism coincide with high levels of threat, especially the impacts of land use.

• Save Costs. The Red List project cost US$593291 for 20,456 taxa, or $29 per taxon. This compared well with other similar projects. Costs were contained by investing in a small team of assessors over the full period. Consultation with experts was pivotal to success, through a combination of workshops and interviews with individual specialists – the latter being more efficient than the former.

• Achieve comprehensive assessments to ensure conservation attention for a greater proportion of the flora. Previous RDB studies (Hall et al. 1980, Hilton-Taylor 1996; Golding 2002) had covered less than 20% of South Africa’s flora. By covering all 20,456 taxa, the study added 2045 taxa to the Red List, of which 942 were threatened with extinction. The comprehensive survey also identified knowledge gaps in both conservation needs and taxonomic research (Von Staden et al. 2013).

South Africa’s Plants Red List process was not a once-off project. Continuity is provided by a small dedicated team of plant ecologists which updates the status of South Africa’s species on an annual basis. This same team ensures that priority threatened species are included in a variety of conservation interventions ranging from identifying and raising funds for the plants that need recovery and reintroduction to developing and implementing projects to identify key sites for the protection of high concentrations of threatened plants. Fine-scale spatial data on the distribution of plants of conservation concern, collected as part of the assessment process, are continuously fed into spatial biodiversity planning, land-use decision making and protected area expansion strategies. The Red List has been the foundation on which many elements of South Africa’s plant conservation strategy have developed.

The South African Plants Red List experience is currently being shared not only across southern Africa, but also in the megafloras of Columbia and Brazil. What started as one taxonomist’s passion for the rare wildflowers of the Cape fynbos (Hall et al. 1980), has now evolved into a global model.

8 CREW: Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers

In conservation, success breeds success. Building on the experience of the Southern African Birds Atlas project, a second large citizen science project was launched in 2003 – the Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers (CREW) project. While SABAP surveyed the distribution and seasonality of 928 species of birds, CREW has in its portfolio no less than 4809 species of plants (23.5% of the national flora) considered in the Red List of South African Plants (Raimondo et al. 2009) to be under threat. CREW tackles the challenges of assessing the status of rare and threatened plants directly, in the field, through the support of volunteer citizen scientists. It is an initiative of the Botanical Society of South Africa, affectionately known as the BotSoc. Established in 1913, simultaneous to the founding of the National Botanic Gardens of South Africa, the BotSoc has served effectively as a public support organisation for Kirstenbosch and other National Botanical Gardens for more than a century (Huntley 2012). The BotSoc is the oldest plant conservation NGO in Africa.

The CREW model differs from other citizen science projects in that it is spatially targeted, with nodes of citizens established and focused on threatened ecosystems spread across South Africa. This approach of embedding capacity across South Africa’s landscapes has been incredibly valuable allowing the development of local experts on the country’s unique plants and ensuring there are eyes and ears close to the ground to respond to development pressures.

In the CREW Newsletter of April 2019, project founder Domitilla Raimondo (2019) reported that since 2003 CREW citizen scientists have collected accurate, reliable and recent plant species data, amounting to a total of 100,570 field records for 8973 plant species (44% of the national flora). The data set included 2120 threatened and rare plants across South Africa and from a highly diverse array of families and genera. As important as the collection of data, is the collection of herbarium specimens in order to confirm identifications. The field data collected by volunteers has been used to either confirm a plant species’ Red List status or to correct erroneous classifications of previously poorly known species. CREW has added 19,437 specimens to SANBI’s herbaria, material that has allowed taxonomists to describe 30 plant species new to science (Figs. 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, and 7.7). The CREW teams have also participated in SANBI’s ongoing collaboration with the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, contributing 25% of the species of South African plants banked by the MSB since 2005.

Fig. 7.4

CREW Volunteers search for rare, threatened and poorly documented species in the highland grasslands of Mpumalanga. (Photo: Mervyn Lotter)

Fig. 7.5

New, rare and threatened plant species re-discovered by CREW field workers: Oxalis sp. nov. (Photo: Brian du Preez)

Fig. 7.6

New, rare and threatened plant species re-discovered by CREW field workers: Lobostemum belliformis. (Photo: Dave Underwood)

Fig. 7.7

New, rare and threatened plant species re-discovered by CREW field workers: Erica pilulifera. (Photo: Cliff Dorse)

In common with the SABAP projects, CREW provides data essential to formal Environmental Impact Assessments, and specifically to the new and mandatory Environmental Screening Tool being developed by SANBI and the Department of Environmental Affairs. Raimondo (2019) noted that this integration of citizen science data into government land-use planning and decision making is globally novel.

Although the use of volunteer and amateur botanists in threatened plant surveys was conceived within the floristically megadiverse Cape Floristic Region, where the vast richness of rare and often narrowly endemic species challenges the time and energy of the small core of professional workers, CREW rapidly expanded its activities across South Africa, with ‘nodes’ of volunteers in every biome and major vegetation type of the country. Although closely linked to the activities of central government agencies, CREW teams now work with provincial, metropolitan and non-governmental organisations, and in particular with the Biodiversity Stewardship programmes, identifying key sites to be brought under protection. CREW volunteers are true custodians: they alert relevant government officials to any threats impacting endemic rare and threatened plants such as the spread of invasive alien species within nature reserves, or the possibility of inappropriate development on fragments of threatened vegetation where threatened plants are concentrated.

The impact of CREW is best summed up by an independent review (Stewart 2019) of the project:

By leveraging the goodwill, expertise, time and financial resources of volunteer citizen scientists, SANBI and the Botanical Society have been able to acquire vastly more data and contribute far more widely to conservation initiatives than if the programme had been implemented only by employed staff. In light of the vast geographical extent of the country, the immense diversity of South Africa’s flora, and the depth of skills and experience needed to accurately identify species, which take an extensive period of time to acquire, the programme has to date delivered a very high return on investment.