State of Biodiversity Report 2017

CapeNature has compiled State of Biodiversity reports every five years since 2002 and this is the fourth report. These reports aim to give some indication of the state of the ecosystems of the Western Cape Province (WCP) and their constituents which are the many species that occur in this province.

These reports taken together over time should provide rough trends in the health of the WCP’s biodiversity, species and ecosystems. The current report provides a brief summary of changes since the 2012 report (Turner 2012) and thus should be read in conjunction with the 2012 (and older) reports. These reports should also be seen as a useful adjunct to the Western Cape State of the Environment Outlook Report 2014 - 2017. The WCP Department of Environmental Affairs & Development Planning produces a State of Environment Report (SoER) every five years. This SoER has a wider scope than CapeNature’s Status of Biodiversity report and thus incorporates some of the findings in the CapeNature report.