Lower Tokai’s fynbos recovery is not what the species count suggests

The flourishing fynbos pictured beside a Lower Tokai walking path may look like proof of natural recovery, but the author says it tells only part of the story. The two plants shown, Golden Conebush and Sugar Bush, are widespread generalists rather than threatened or endemic Cape Flats Sand Plain Fynbos species.

The author asked specialist consultant Doug Euston-Brown to independently survey Lower Tokai against a 622-species list circulated by the Friends of Tokai Park. Euston-Brown could not verify 445 species, or 71 percent of the list, either through his own survey or on iNaturalist. Whatever recovery is taking place, the article argues, it falls well short of what the public has been led to expect.

The plants in the photograph are reseeders that rely on seeds released by parent plants immediately after fire. They do not maintain a seed bank in the soil. Their concentration in the first section cleared, around 2006, is therefore described as more consistent with deliberate seed scattering, which the author says is documented as having occurred at Lower Tokai, than with recovery from a naturally stored seed bank.

The author stresses that this is not an argument that Cape Flats Sand Plain Fynbos is safe. The claim is instead that Lower Tokai cannot return to pristine condition for at least a few hundred years because centuries of forestry and farming added nutrients to the soil. Fynbos is highly sensitive to even small nutrient increases, while paths, roads, farming and pollution from the urban edge continue to add more. The author also rejects the idea that pines should be retained for shade, saying earlier proposals called only for shaded recreation space using non-invasive species. Those proposals, the article says, have been ignored. A dedicated Sand Plain Fynbos garden is presented as the more realistic alternative.