Attitudes and behaviour of landholders towards the conservation of Overberg Coastal Renosterveld, a threatened vegetation type in the Cape Floral Kingdom

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis describes the findings of a survey to investigate the attitudes and behaviour of private landholderstowards the conservation of Overberg Coastal Renosterveld, a highly endangered grassy-shrubland of theCape Floral Region (CFR) lowlands, now 94% transformed. Personal interviews were conducted with 36farmers in the Overberg region of the Western Cape, by administering a questionnaire. The following aspectswere quantitatively described using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS): Renosterveldmanagement and utilisation behaviour, perceived value of Overberg Coastal Renosterveld; landholderknowledge of its conservation importance and willingness to conserve it. Attitudes towards incentives forconservation; conservancies; and the provincial conservation authorities were also investigated. Willingnessto conserve was explored further using SPSS cross-tabulation analyses. It was found that farmers who weremore willing to conserve were younger, did not necessarily have a better education, and owned larger farms(> 500 ha) with a greater amount of remnant renosterveld (> 300 ha) than farmers less willing to conserve.Attitudes towards Overberg Coastal Renosterveld were largely negative, due to certain associated plants andanimals which are problems for farmers, and because it is not economically advantageous to retain it.However, provision of incentives (of which assistance with fencing and land management was mostattractive) and increased extension support will provide practical positive inducements for conservation.There is also a need for more landholder education regarding the scarcity of coastal renosterveld to preventtransformation of remaining fragments.The second component of the study aimed to construct a user-friendly index to measure the conservationattitudes of landholders towards conserving Overberg Coastal Renosterveld. An interative item analysis wasexecuted on the data, using Spearman Rank Order correlations and Cronbach's Alpha. Results yielded anindex with two dimensions and a Cronbach Alpha co-efficient of 0.67. The dimensions or components ofconservation attitude towards renosterveld included: (i) a landholders' perception of the perceived benefit ofOverberg Coastal Renosterveld; and (ii) their willingness to conserve it. The mean conservation attitudescore was 0.6 (± 0.03), indicating that landholder attitudes were generally sympathetic towards renosterveldconservation. This suggests that while many landholders do not place a high value on Overberg CoastalRenosterveld due to its low agricultural value, their willingness to conserve it is in some cases higher thanexpected, which possibly explains the above-average mean conservation attitude score. An analysis ofvariance showed that the following variables were significantly, positively correlated with conservationattitude: (i) area of Overberg Coastal Renosterveld; (ii) landholder environmental group membership status;(iii) presence of ecotourism activities on the property; and (iv) how long the property had been in theowner's family. The intended application of the index is that index scores (amenable for use in aGeographical Information System database) can assist conservation practitioners in deciding where resources should be allocated, on the assumption that high-scoring individuals are more likely to want to take part inconservation initiatives.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University