Soutpansberg Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation

The Soutpansberg Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation (SCBC) is an on-going and evolving project that aims to generate information on biodiversity in the Soutpansberg region of northern South Africa. The project’s primary objectives are to find and identify neglected, overlooked and understudied organisms in the Soutpansberg area; generating an inventory of species to assist researchers, conservationists, landowners and interested members of the public in understanding the richness of this ‘biodiversity hotspot’. Presently the SCBC is focused on reptiles, amphibians and scorpions. Searching for these organisms results in a lot of ‘by-catch’ and activities have grown to include: Theraphosidae (baboon spiders) and allies, Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies), Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) and small mammals.