Wednesday 22 June 2022

The Wildlife Map of South Africa


Diamond and gold may well be South Africa's most valued reserves, but this beautiful country's most invaluable treasure is its wildlife! True to its title of 'Rainbow Nation', South Africa boasts of a biogeography as diverse and complex as its multicultural ethnicity: from the savanna forests of Kruger National Park at one end, home to the Big Five; to the unique Cape Floral Kingdom at the other extreme, home to some of the country's rarest endemics. The topographically diverse nation has been designed to harbour a staggering amount of biodiversity by a few crucial factors: oceanic currents from two oceans that meet at its southern tip, and the Great Escarpment that divides the country into the various biomes that we see on the map: the Karoo scrubs of the northwest, the Kalahari desert in the north, the fynbos coastal ecosystem of the southwest, mountain forests of the south, the Drakensberg highlands shared by SA and Lesotho in the east, and the bushveld and savanna forests of the northeast. 

The map brings together more than a hundred of the country's wild animals in one massive illustration, with a special focus on endemic species. Prints are available on my webstore here, shipped worldwide. For orders within India visit my Indian webstore.

(A big thanks to friends and mentors who have hosted me in South Africa: Swati Thiyagarajan and Craig Foster of Seachange with whom I am working on a very exciting illustrated compilation; and Karishma Pais and Brajesh Bajpai!)

Click on the images below for some close-up snippets:









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