From 28 to 31 January, John Midgley (Assistant Director/Principal Curator of Natural Science Department at the KZN Museum) attended the first discussion meeting on the development of a new Biodiversity plan for the KwaZulu-Natal Province.
The meeting was held at the Didima Resort in the Cathedral Peak area of the Drakensberg. The Biodiversity plan is the go to document used by conservation planners in the province, prioritizing areas for conservation and ensuring that developments in the province do not come at an undue cost to biodiversity.The primary aim of the workshop was to decide on methods for species assessment and development ofconservation targets, and the entire process will take about two years to complete. Taking part in these developments is an important goal in the DIPoDIP project, converting the knowledge created through primary research into policy that guides development in KwaZulu-Natal. The process involved discussions about the aims of conservation in the province and breakaway group discussions about specific target taxa.Various DIPoDIP fieldwork and publications in the last five years have increased our knowledge of invertebrates in KwaZulu-Natal, enabling the inclusion of more species in the Biodiversity Plan.
About the DIPoDIP and DIPoDIP2 projects
The โDiversity of pollinating Diptera in South African biodiversityhotspotsโ project (DIPoDIP) was a five year project (2019-2023) financedby the Belgian Directorate-general Development Cooperation andHumanitarian Aid through a framework agreement with KMMA. It was acollaboration between the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), theKwaZulu-Natal Museum (KZNM), Stellenbosch University (SU), the SouthAfrican National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), and the AfricaMuseum(RMCA, Belgium). The project is continued as the โDiversity of pollinatingDiptera in Afrotropical biodiversity hotspotsโ (DIPoDIP2) project (2024-2029) with the following partners: KZNM, SU, the University of Pretoria(UP, South Africa), the Burundian Office for the Protection of theEnvironment (OBPE, Burundi), the University of Rwanda (UR, Rwanda),and the RMCA.
First published in the PINDIP Newsletter on 31 March 2025. Sign up for the PINDIP newsletter at https://www.pindip.org/
