Plain Language Summary: Few urban South Africans know their national biodiversity symbols

By Ondwela Tshikombeni, Charlie Shackleton, and Monde Ntshudu.

Read the full paper here.

Nearly every country in the world has national symbols likes flags and coats of arms. Many also have national animals or plants that symbolise something about the country, such as its character, history or values. We have termed these “national biodiversity symbols.” Being national symbols, one might expect that citizens of a country will know them and know about them. That means they are potentially useful species to ‘headline’ broader conservation initiatives in locations where they occur. However, despite most countries having one or more national biodiversity symbols, there is little research on whether citizens do indeed know them. Consequently, we do not know their value in perhaps headlining conservation programmes.

Using face-to-face interviews, we investigated whether urban South Africans from several towns in different provinces of the country knew one or more of the five national biodiversity symbols (national animal, bird, fish, flower and tree). We found that slightly over half of urban South Africans could name one of the five national symbols and just under 3 % could name all five. The most well-known of the five were the national flower and animal, which also lend their names to national sports teams. Despite the low levels of knowledge of the symbols, most people thought that having national biodiversity symbols was important for national identity and unity.

These findings show that from a heritage perspective South Africa needs to develop a great deal more awareness around national biodiversity symbols. We suspect that the same conclusion applies in other countries. From a conservation perspective, these results show that the national biodiversity symbols are unlikely, at this stage at least, to be useful in designing broader habitat conservation programmes around them.