Programme Manager: Threatened Species, South African National Biodiverity Institute
After completing BSc and honours degrees at the University of Cape Town, Wendy went to London and worked in information technology to earn money to travel. While subsequently doing research on trees in Tanzania, she decided to do an MSc in conservation biology.
‘My research centred on climate change, specifically its impact on the kokerboom or quiver tree. The results were disturbing, so the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) asked me to extend my research over Northern Cape and Namibia,” she says. She now manages the SANBI’s threatened species programme.
‘As a team, we’re working on an update of the Red Data List of threatened plant species. There are about 19 500 plant species and not much information on most of them, so it will take some time!”
Wendy has presented her research on the kokerboom to congresses around the world. ‘ This clear biological indicator of climate change is the first in Africa and the first in arid ecosystems,” she says. ‘It must be a big wake-up call for policy-makers. The cause is mainly the burning of fossil fuels, and is really bad here in South Africa – the worst in Africa. We must do more to address this.”