Urban biodiversity

View from Kirstenbosch over Cape Town suburbs with the affluent Bishopscourt suburb in the foreground. [photo H. Robertson, Iziko ©]

Most of us live in cities and towns and hence it is all the more important to understand urban biodiversity. The urban environment includes buildings, roads, cultivated gardens and also variable amounts of natural vegetation fragments. Each town or city tends to have certain plants and animals that characterise it. For instance the Jacaranda tree is strongly associated with Pretoria. Biodiversity Explorer covers both indigenous and exotic species that are encountered in southern Africa and in due course we will be featuring the biodiversity that characterises particular southern African cities and towns.