Why was the Cape Floral Region declared a Natural World Heritage Site?
In the interest of accuracy, I found it necessary to quote this directly from the Table Mountain National Park website, because I didn’t want to miss a thing, as I find it fascinating. ~~ The Cape Floral Region is the smallest and richest of the six floral kingdoms that occur on earth. It is also the only kingdom confined to one continent and is home to an amazing 8,200 plant species – of which around 80% are fynbos (fine bush). The significance of this hits home when you consider that the British Isles, 3 ½ times the size, boasts less than 1,500 plant species. ~~ Many of the plants that occur here are endemic – that means that they occur nowhere else on earth. To add to this there are around 1,406 threatened plant species, 300 of which are endangered or critically endangered and 29 plant species are already extinct. It is this combination of high diversity and levels of threat from issues like urbanization, poor fire management and alien species that makes the CFR the world’s hottest
