CapeNature 2025/26: A Living Ecological System

CapeNature 2025/26: The Western Cape as a Living Ecological System

Exploring CapeNature's 2025/26 plan and the interconnected biodiversity, landscapes, water, wildlife and communities of the Western Cape.

Vernon Chalmers Photography approaches nature photography as a practice of observation as well as image-making. This feature interprets CapeNature's 2025/26 Annual Performance Plan through the perspective of landscape, biodiversity and nature observation in the Western Cape. The report's 2025/26 targets are presented as planned performance indicators and should not be interpreted as subsequent performance results.

CapeNature's 2025/26 Annual Performance Plan provides a fascinating perspective on the Western Cape as an interconnected ecological system. From biodiversity and ecological infrastructure to water security, climate resilience, marine environments, wildlife, tourism and communities, the plan reveals the much larger system behind the landscapes we photograph.

Download CapeNature ANNUALPERFORMANCEPLAN 2025/26

CapeNature and the Western Cape's Living Landscape

The Western Cape is often experienced through its scenery.

For a photographer, that experience may begin with a mountain catching the early light, a wetland filled with waterbirds, a raptor crossing an open landscape, a flowering fynbos plant, a seabird over the ocean, or an estuary meeting the sea.

But each of these subjects exists within something considerably larger than the photographic frame.

The CapeNature Annual Performance Plan 2025/26 provides an opportunity to look beyond the individual landscape, species or protected area and consider the Western Cape as an interconnected ecological system. The document sets out CapeNature's priorities and planned performance for 2025/26, the first year of its new five-year strategic cycle. Its stated impact is enhanced biodiversity conservation, ecological sustainability and climate resilience, with outcomes that connect conservation to both climate resilience and an equitable biodiversity economy.

For those of us who spend time observing and photographing nature, this broader perspective is important.

The photograph records the moment. The landscape explains the moment.

A remarkable concentration of biodiversity

The starting point is the extraordinary biological diversity of the Western Cape.

CapeNature's plan records more than 10,000 plant species in the province, with 68% described as endemic. It also identifies 334 plant species and 47 animal species categorised as critically endangered.

The Cape Floristic Region is central to this story. CapeNature describes it as one of the world's recognised biodiversity hotspots, containing approximately 9,000 plant species, around 70% of which are endemic. Despite occupying less than 0.5% of Africa's landmass, the region contains approximately one-fifth of Africa's plant species.

These statistics change the way a landscape can be perceived.

A flowering plant is no longer simply an attractive photographic subject.

A wetland is not merely a convenient location for photographing waterbirds.

A mountain is not simply a scenic backdrop.

Each can be part of a much larger ecological system.

This is particularly relevant to nature photography because the camera naturally isolates. A telephoto lens compresses distance and removes surrounding context. A macro lens can reduce an entire environment to a single flower or insect. The resulting photograph may be visually precise while concealing the complexity of the system that produced the moment.

CapeNature's plan encourages us to reverse that process intellectually: to move from the individual observation back towards the landscape.

From protected areas to ecological infrastructure

One of the most significant concepts in the plan is ecological infrastructure.

CapeNature describes ecological infrastructure in terms of naturally functioning ecosystems that provide services to people and the economy. Mountain catchments, rivers, wetlands, estuaries, coastal dunes and connected areas of natural habitat form part of this infrastructure. These systems contribute to clean water, pollination, climate regulation and reducing risks associated with floods, droughts and fires.

This provides a useful way of understanding conservation beyond the conventional idea of a reserve boundary.

A protected area is not necessarily an ecological island.

Its rivers may flow beyond its boundaries. Animals may move between protected and privately managed land. Fire does not recognise property boundaries. Water flowing from a mountain catchment eventually becomes part of downstream systems. Coastal and marine environments are similarly interconnected.

CapeNature's Landscape Conservation Model reflects this understanding. The organisation describes a move away from concentrating exclusively on individual protected areas towards understanding and connecting entire landscapes and creating an ecological network. The model is intended to continue during the new five-year strategic period.

For the observer, this is a profound shift in perspective.

The location where a photograph is made may be small.

The ecological system behind it is not.

Mountains, catchments and the water beneath the landscape

Perhaps nowhere is this interconnectedness more important than in the relationship between biodiversity and water.

CapeNature reports that 47.67% of its managed protected areas fall within South Africa's Strategic Water Source Areas. Five of the six Strategic Water Source Areas occurring in the Western Cape cover areas largely managed by CapeNature.

The mountain landscape therefore has a significance that extends far beyond its visual appeal.

Catchments contribute to the freshwater systems on which downstream communities and economic activities depend. CapeNature identifies invasive alien vegetation, fire and changing climatic conditions among the issues requiring active management.

The plan describes projections of hotter and drier conditions, changing rainfall patterns and increasingly intense weather events. Its response includes clearing invasive alien vegetation, improved fire management and attention to appropriate land use within important catchments.

The connections are therefore extensive.

Vegetation affects water.

Fire affects vegetation.

Climate affects fire and rainfall.

Land management affects catchments.

And catchments affect people.

A photograph of a mountain stream can consequently be viewed as a small visual entry point into a much larger environmental story.

Fire, invasive species and climate resilience

The CapeNature plan places considerable emphasis on resilience.

Among its 2025/26 performance indicators are the maintenance of firebreaks and the clearing of invasive alien plants on CapeNature-managed protected areas. The plan identifies these as new indicators for which baselines are to be established during the 2025/26 period.

That qualification is important.

The Annual Performance Plan is a planning document. Its targets should therefore not automatically be interpreted as evidence of completed work. They establish what CapeNature intended to measure and achieve during the financial year.

The broader strategy nevertheless demonstrates how closely ecological management and climate resilience have become linked.

CapeNature describes measures including disaster-risk reduction, restoration and protection of wetlands, riparian corridors and coastal corridors within an integrated catchment-to-coast approach. The plan also notes that recent flooding caused significant infrastructure damage within protected areas and affected operations and eco-tourism.

Climate resilience, therefore, is not an abstract future concern.

It has practical implications for conservation infrastructure, tourism, fire management, water systems and the ability to maintain functioning ecosystems.

The Western Cape does not end at the shoreline

The ecological system extends from the mountains to the sea.

CapeNature is the management authority for six Marine Protected Areas: Betty's Bay, De Hoop, Rocherpan, Stilbaai, Goukamma and Robberg.

Together, these cover approximately 100 kilometres of coastline and 42,739 hectares of coastal zone. CapeNature also has responsibility for 13 estuaries that fall partly or completely within these marine protected areas.

The plan highlights the importance of estuaries as habitats for different life stages of fish species, including spawning areas and refugia for juveniles. Telemetry observations have demonstrated important dependencies between several fish species, marine protected areas and estuaries.

This has particular resonance for maritime observation.

A coastal photograph may contain a lighthouse, vessel, seabird, fishing boat or breaking wave. Yet beneath that relatively simple visual scene may exist a complicated relationship between marine habitats, estuaries, fisheries, conservation and human activity.

The maritime landscape is therefore another part of the same ecological story.

Birds as observers' entry points into the system

Bird photography provides perhaps the most immediate connection between individual observation and wider ecological monitoring.

CapeNature's plan identifies avian influenza as an ongoing threat to seabird colonies in the Western Cape. It records that the 2021 outbreak resulted in the deaths of 25,001 seabirds in the province, with subsequent sporadic outbreaks. The plan specifically identifies offshore islands including Dassen and Dyer Islands as areas requiring continued monitoring and coordinated management.

For a photographer, the starting point may simply be:

There is a bird.

For conservation science, the questions become considerably broader:

Where is it occurring?

How many are present?

Is the population changing?

What habitat is it using?

Is there evidence of disease?

What environmental factors are influencing its behaviour?

CapeNature explicitly identifies monitoring and understanding the status and trends of ecosystems, habitats and species as important components of biodiversity management.

This is one reason photography can become more than image-making.

Repeated observation creates a record.

A photograph has a date, location, subject and environmental context. A sequence of photographs can reveal behaviour, seasonality, habitat use or changes in the landscape.

The individual photograph may therefore become one small piece of observational evidence.

Conservation is also about people

Another important aspect of the plan is that conservation is not treated as something separate from the communities surrounding protected areas.

CapeNature identifies employment opportunities through the Expanded Public Works Programme, Natural Resource Management, Integrated Catchment Management, local SMMEs, invasive alien clearing, firebreak maintenance, firefighting, road and trail maintenance and eco-tourism. It also identifies paid learnerships and internships as mechanisms for developing employment readiness.

For 2025/26, the organisation planned for 700 work opportunities through environment-sector public employment programmes, alongside targets relating to compliance inspections and criminal investigations.

This provides another perspective on what appears to be an untouched landscape.

The photograph may show a pristine trail.

Behind that trail there may be people maintaining it.

A firebreak may appear as a simple line through vegetation.

Behind it is a programme of planning and labour intended to reduce fire risk.

A functioning tourism facility may appear effortless to the visitor.

Behind it is infrastructure, maintenance, employment and local economic activity.

Nature conservation therefore has a substantial human component.

Tourism as part of the conservation economy

CapeNature's Eco-Tourism and Access Programme is similarly positioned within this broader system.

The programme is intended to provide access to natural resources, develop tourism products, generate income and facilitate economic and social opportunities associated with the biodiversity economy.

For 2025/26, the plan includes targets for a 7% increase in tourism income, ten new or upgraded tourism products, six destination-marketing initiatives, 350 environmental awareness activities and 80 environmental capacity-building activities.

This creates an interesting relationship between access and conservation.

People cannot develop a meaningful connection with places they never experience.

At the same time, increased access requires appropriate infrastructure and management.

Tourism can therefore become part of the conservation economy while simultaneously creating pressures that have to be managed.

The balance is not necessarily simple.

It is another example of the interconnected systems that the plan attempts to manage.

Conservation under constraint

The document is also candid about the practical constraints facing the organisation.

CapeNature notes that constrained budget allocations and wider macro-economic and fiscal pressures affect activities including compliance and enforcement, catchment management, protected-area management, ecological-infrastructure maintenance and biodiversity management.

Partnerships consequently become important.

CapeNature reports that partnership agreements supporting integrated fire management have a value of approximately R91 million, while protected-area expansion through land acquisition and stewardship projects represents approximately R138 million in partnership value.

This reinforces the landscape-scale philosophy.

The ecological problem may cross boundaries.

The response therefore often has to cross boundaries as well.

Government departments, municipalities, conservation organisations, landowners, communities, researchers and private-sector participants can all become part of the wider conservation system.

Looking beyond the photograph

The CapeNature Annual Performance Plan 2025/26 is ultimately a government entity's planning and performance document.

But for the nature observer, it provides something else: a framework for understanding the landscape.

It reminds us that the Western Cape's biodiversity cannot be adequately understood by looking at individual protected areas, individual species or individual photographs in isolation.

Mountains connect to catchments.

Catchments connect to rivers and wetlands.

Wetlands connect to estuaries.

Estuaries connect to the coast.

The coast connects to marine ecosystems.

Species move through these environments.

People depend upon them.

Climate change affects them.

And conservation has to work across the connections.

CapeNature's stated vision is to create a sustainable future in which biodiversity flourishes and communities thrive. Its mission is to protect and enhance the natural environment of the Western Cape while fostering a deep connection between people and nature.

For photographers, that final idea is perhaps the most accessible.

A camera creates a connection with a place.

Observation deepens it.

Repeated observation creates familiarity.

Familiarity encourages questions.

And questions can lead beyond the photograph into the ecology, history and conservation of the landscape.

The raptor crossing the sky, the waterbird on the wetland, the flowering plant, the mountain catchment, the seabird over the Atlantic or the vessel moving along the coast are not isolated subjects.

They are visible expressions of a much larger system.

The camera sees the subject. Observation begins to reveal the system.

And perhaps that is one of the most useful ways to approach nature photography in the Western Cape: not simply as the recording of beautiful things, but as an opportunity to pay closer attention to a living landscape and the complex ecological relationships that sustain it.

Source note

This feature is based primarily on the CapeNature Annual Performance Plan 2025/26 supplied for this article. The figures and targets above should be understood in their original context as planned 2025/26 performance indicators unless explicitly described otherwise. This distinction will also make the article useful as a future reference point when CapeNature's subsequent performance reporting becomes available.