Join our search for chameleons

Writers-in-tandem Morgan and Tertia Hendricks, WCC Chameleon Project

The summer holiday season always brings many special moments to cherish, including relaxing around a crackling fire, enjoying a fragrant braai and melting marshmallows. Our indigenous fynbos also benefit from fire, ideally about every 15 years.

While some plants are designed to withstand the fire, dense vegetation is burned to reveal lower-growing flowering bulbs, the fire’s heat and smoke encourages fynbos seed dispersal and germination, and falling ash replenishes the soil with nutrients and promotes healthy regrowth of the fynbos (The relationship between fynbos and fire, The Village News, 15 January 2019).

On the other hand, a fire isn’t a very appealing idea to the creatures that live in the greenbelts or on the few remaining open plots in our neighbourhood.

For the past 2 – 3 years, volunteers with Whale Coast Conservation’s Chameleon Project have been learning about the vulnerable Cape dwarf chameleon (Bradypodion pumilum). Endemic to the south-western Cape region, our little slow-footed friends face many threats: barging bulldozers levelling land for housing and farming, alien invasive plants threatening their perfect fynbos habitat, the beaks of beady-eyed carnivorous birds, the clutches of curious domestic cats, unsuitable habitat in urban gardens… and fearsome, roaring fires!

Here in Hermanus, the time has come for our local Overstrand Municipality to do some controlled burns of fynbos, on sites where natural fires have not occurred in 15 years. Ahead of these prescribed burns, we need more volunteers to join the Chameleon Project to conduct night searches on these sites. If we find any resident chameleons on a site, they have to be rescued and relocated to safety. If no chameleons are found, it means that the municipality can proceed with the controlled burn.

Perhaps after the fynbos has regrown, we may be able to place more chameleons on that site once again. We have happy memories of our past two years of chameleon monitoring with our torch-lights after dark – children, teenagers, parents and grandparents all joining together to do our searchwork-homework! It is a fun and freeing adventure as we go about bundu-bashing

Click below to read more. (The full article can be found on page 15)