Report: SANParks Global Environmental Change Project: Freshwater Change Summary Report

The principal objective of SANParks’ Global Environmental Change Project is to improve our understanding of the status of, and trends in, environmental change in parks and using this information to produce science-based policy and management recommendations. Aquatic ecosystems were included as one of six drivers of environmental change, with alien species, climate change, habitat change, resource use/overexploitation, and disease.
For the aquatic ecosystem assessment we largely made use of data produced by two national developments: the identification of Freshwater Ecosystem Priority Areas (FEPAs) for South Africa (Nel et al., 2011); and the second National Biodiversity Assessment (NBA) for South Africa (Driver et al., 2012). Drawing extensively on the products from these two initiatives, this report aims to:
Provide an overview of the:
ecological state of, and main pressures on, aquatic ecosystems in South Africa; and
conservation status and protection levels (through the national park system) of aquatic ecosystems in South Africa;
Assess the contribution of each national park to the achievement of national conservation targets for aquatic ecosystems; and
Propose general management/response guidelines for SANParks in context of its mandate to conserve aquatic ecosystems;
Moreover, we aimed to answer specific questions that are of particular relevance to SANParks: (a) To what degree does the National Parks (NPs) contribute to aquatic conservation targets in South Africa? (b) What is the contribution of each of the 19 NPs to aquatic conservation? (c) What can SANParks do to promote effective conservation of aquatic ecosystems?