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4.2. Percentage of D’MOSS that is Protected
Only 7.03% of the area of D’MOSS enjoys some form of protection (Table 2 and Figure 3). This includes various categories of protection: proclaimed and unproclaimed private or public nature reserves; properties that have been bought through the EM’s environmental land acquisition programme; sites where sensitive portions have been protected by non- user conservation servitudes during the development approval process; and sites that have been rezoned to conservation. This may appear as a decrease from the 2017/2018 State of biodiversity report (SOBR), which had 8.20% of D’MOSS protected, however, this is a result of D’MOSS itself expanding in 2018 from approximately 79 000ha to 95 000ha.There was,
in fact, an increase in relative protected D’MOSS area from 6 459.2ha in 2017/2018 to 6 664.7ha in 2018/2019.
There was also an increase in the total protected area in EM from 3% to 3.6% from 2017/2018 to 2018/2019 (Table 2).This is still below the Convention of Biological Diversity’s requirement for all governments to protect a minimum of 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10% of coastal and marine areas.7 In addition, it has been noted that these flat targets may be too small to adequately ensure the preservation of habitat types into perpetuity as it may not have a compelling ecological rationale. As a consequence, South Africa has adopted a more scientific-based approach to setting conservation targets.
7. It should be noted that 2017/2018’s Percentage of D’MOSS that is Protected should have been calculated using 95 000ha and, had it been done so, would have resulted in the percentage of area being protected equating to 6.80% and not the 8.20% as was reported.
STATE OF BIODIVERSITY REPORT 2018/2019
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