Hedges against extinction : An Inner City Regional Riverine Botanical Park

Abstract

The central principle behind conserving river systems is to set aside a certain area of land to create representations of ecosystems that occur in the region to act as ecological or biodiverse depository. This is done to buffer against future modifications of the river systems in an effort to preserve the original biodiversity presence (Roux & Nel, 2013). There is a need for the conservation for the waterways of Pretoria to increase biodiversity and ecosystem service potential. The study site is in the Berea Park area, which are historic sportsgrounds that are now abandoned. The site sits adjacent to the Apies River within the 1:100 year flood line and can get completely flooded during such a flood event. The river was dechannelised and various flooding strategies where incorporated to mitigate and absorb the treat of a flood in the city. Education plays an important role in conservation and developing the site. However, it has been shown that people have inherent biases to ignore the environment around them in favour of more active attention. This is known as plant blindness and is a major issue when trying to create awareness of ecological importance (Allen, 2003). The purpose of this dissertation is to test the viability of conserving regional river plant species in Pretoria through devising strategies to display plants in such a way as to counteract plant blindness. By placing the user in a phenomenological experience of a place such as a river, it is argued that plant blindness can be cured and create awareness. This in turn has positive consequences for riverine plant conservation.