The plant ecology and fynbos recovery of Lower Tokai — an alternative view

On 25 August, Daily Maverick published a piece by John Yeld on the future of Lower Tokai, citing two respected colleagues – professors Dave Richardson and Richard Cowling, both former graduate students of mine – in support of full fynbos restoration. I want to offer the evidence behind a different view.

The species count doesn’t hold up

Much of the case for restoration rests on claims of a rich, recovering species list. At my request, Parkscape commissioned specialist consultant Doug Euston-Brown to independently survey Lower Tokai against the 622-species list circulated by the Friends of Tokai Park. His finding: 71% of that list – 445 species – could not be verified on site, either by his own survey or on iNaturalist. Whatever recovery is happening in Lower Tokai, it is not the scale of recovery the public has been told to expect.

What the cover photo actually shows

Yeld’s article opens with a photograph (see below) of flourishing fynbos beside a walking path – this is an understandably appealing image. But the two species pictured – Leucadendron laureolum (Golden Conebush) and Protea repens (Sugar Bush) – are widespread generalists, not threatened or endemic to Cape Flats Sand Plain Fynbos (CFSPF). Both are reseeders that depend on seed released by mother plants immediately after fire – they hold no soil-stored seed bank. Their density in this one location, which happens to be the very first section cleared (around 2006), is far more consistent with deliberate seed-scattering – which is on record as having occurred in Lower Tokai – than with a naturally recovering seed bank. 

What I have actually said – and haven’t

I have never claimed CFSPF isn’t highly threatened. What I have said, consistently, is that Lower Tokai cannot be restored to a pristine condition – not for at least a few hundred years – because the soil has been altered by added nutrients over centuries of forestry and farming.

Nor have I ever argued for retaining pines as shade. Our Shout4Shade submission to Table Mountain National Park in 2012 asked only that sufficient shaded recreation space be built into management planning. In the report we listed multiple non-invasive shade species as options. Parkscape has made similar proposals. All have, so far, been ignored.

Why nutrients matter more than the current debate acknowledges

Fynbos is a nutrient-sensitive heathland vegetation type – a small increase in soil nutrients can significantly alter its biodiversity. Path and road infrastructure, decades of farming and ongoing airborne pollution from a dense urban edge (vehicle emissions, winter smog, cooking fires) all add nutrients incrementally, often with effects that aren’t visible for years. This is a well-established feature of heathland ecology globally, yet it’s rarely weighted appropriately in local assessments – which tend to treat fynbos primarily through a Mediterranean-climate lens rather than the distinct, nutrient-driven heathland type that it is.

On the recent evidence Richardson cites

Richardson points to a 2024 peer-reviewed study showing that seed banks, pollination and seed dispersal processes are active in some of the restored sections of Lower Tokai. I don’t dispute that some ecological processes are functioning. But the presence of some of these processes is isolated. Deliberately seeded pockets is a different claim from the recovery of the whole site to anything resembling pristine CFSPF community composition. My own recent, direct observations in Lower Tokai (below) point to a landscape still dominated by short-lived fire-weeds, elevated grass cover and nutrient-indicator species – not the diverse, nutrient-poor heathland community that genuine restoration would require.

Elevated grass cover in a post-fire section is itself an indicator of a fynbos area’s nutrient status running higher than a pristine system would sustain.

A ring of succulent vygie – another marker of localised elevated nutrients – near what may be an old Australian acacia stump.

What pristine Sand Plain Fynbos actually looks like

For context, the two photographs below are from my own archive of the CSIR’s Pella Research Site in the early 1980s – an Atlantis Sand Plain Fynbos site north of Cape Town, in the same broad vegetation family as Lower Tokai’s original cover.

The contrast with what’s currently observable in Lower Tokai is, to my eye, considerable.

A more honest way forward

My assessment: full restoration of pristine CFSPF in Lower Tokai, if actively and expensively pursued, might be achievable in 100 to 200 years – and would require ongoing hot burns on a 10- to 15-year cycle, with real safety implications, given the site’s proximity to dense residential areas and the health risks of smoke inhalation at the urban edge.

I believe a more honest and achievable path is a dedicated Sand Plain Fynbos “garden”, developed jointly by the South African National Biodiversity Institute and SANParks, focused on rare and endangered CFSPF species – paired with a substantial area kept for shaded, safe recreation. Further, larger-scale restoration efforts could then be pursued on the western side of Orpen Road, further from the residential edge, where the same nutrient and safety pressures don’t apply.

A standing offer

Richard Cowling has told me directly that he hasn’t visited Lower Tokai in about 25 years, and I doubt Dave Richardson has recently either. Both are basing their assessment substantially on Friends of Tokai Park-linked papers and on general knowledge of alien plant impacts on mountain fynbos elsewhere – a different system, under different pressures, to the Sand Plain Fynbos at issue here.

I don’t dismiss their expertise. Yeld’s own article notes Richardson himself suggested this shouldn’t be resolved by email or Facebook exchange, but through a facilitated site visit – and I have said the same more than once. That offer stands. I would welcome a joint site inspection with all parties, on the ground, in Lower Tokai itself. DM