seiwchen ikeesha darbiah
Cristoforo Kanoy
Get ready for an adrenaline pumping experience on this high-paced dune driving adventure aboard a unique 5.7litre 400HP V8 dune buggy, a one-of-a-kind vehicle exclusively designed for blasting through the sand dunes.
The Dune Thrasher Sand Rail car offers an extreme, adrenaline-pumping off road experience on the sprawling dunes of Atlantis, South Africa. This custom built vehicle is a first of its kind in South Africa and now you can drive in it!
The Dune Thrasher is a fully imported, American-made, high performance sand rail car powered by a 5.7 litre V8 engine with fully independent air suspension to absorb the bumps. Constructed from a light-weight, high-tensile chromoly framework, it seats 4 passengers and a driver with full-spec racing seat belts.
The massive 600HP engine and light body means that power wheelies and drifting through the sand are what it loves to do. Get ready to strap in and have your hair blown back while blasting through the dunes!
You will be driven through the spectacular Witzenberg Nature Reserve, just a 45 minute drive from Cape Town. For fans of off-road adventures like quad biking and 44 trips in the dunes, this is a wild ride not to be missed.
Its massive 400HP engine and light body means power wheelies and drifting through the sand are what it loves to do. So get ready to strap in and have your hair blown back while blasting through the dunes!
This 1hr sandboarding adventure takes you from learning the ropes to cruising down the dunes at high speeds that will get your adrenaline flowing fast. 44 transport into and up the dunes, equipment for all ages, shade shelter and training provided.
This recovery plan covers 34 species of plantsand animals that occur in the San Joaquin Valley of California. The 11listed species include five endangered plants (California jewelflower,palmate-bracted bird's-beak, Kern mallow, San Joaquin woolly-threads,and Bakersfield cactus), one threatened plant (Hoover's woolly-star),and five endangered animals (giant kangaroo rat, Fresno kangaroo rat,Tipton kangaroo rat, blunt-nosed leopard lizard, and San Joaquin kitfox). In addition, 23 candidates or species of concern are addressed.The plants include lesser saltscale, Bakersfield smallscale, Lost Hillssaltbush, Vasek's clarkia, Temblor buckwheat, Tejon poppy, diamond-petaledCalifornia poppy, Comanche Point layia, Munz's tidy-tips, Jared'speppergrass, Merced monardella, Merced phacelia, and oil neststraw;and the animals include Ciervo aegialian scarab beetle, San Joaquin dunebeetle, Doyen's dune weevil, San Joaquin antelope squirrel, short-nosedkangaroo rat, riparian woodrat, Tulare grasshopper mouse, Buena Vista Lakeshrew, riparian brush rabbit, and San Joaquin Le Conte's thrasher.
The majority of these species occur in arid grasslandsand scrublands of the San Joaquin Valley and the adjacent foothillsand valleys. The riparian woodrat and riparian brush rabbit inhabitforested river corridors of the eastern San Joaquin Valley. Conversionof habitat to agricultural, industrial, and urban uses has eliminatedthese species from the majority of their historic ranges. The remainingnatural communities (generally less than 5 percent of historical values)are highly fragmented, and many are marginal habitats in which thesespecies may not persist during catastrophic events such as droughtor floods. Moreover, natural communities have been altered permanentlyby the introduction of nonnative plants, which now dominate in many ofthe remaining undeveloped areas.
The ultimate goal of this recovery planis to delist the 11 endangered and threatened species and ensure thelong-term conservation of the 23 candidates and species of concern.An interim goal is to reclassify the endangered species to threatenedstatus.
This plan presents both an ecosystem approach to recovery anda community-level strategy for recovery. The latter is appropriatebecause most of the listed and candidate species and species of concernco-occur in the same natural communities and are interdependent.By protecting entire communities, the likelihood of successful recoveryfor listed species is increased, and ensuring the long-term conservationof candidates and species of concern is possible. Of necessity, thiscommunity-level strategy is shaped by the realities of existing habitats;available information on biology, distribution, and population statuses offeatured species; and the current and anticipated biological and socialprocesses that will affect both remnant natural communities and areassubject to intensive human use, within the human-dominated landscape(i.e., ecosystem) of the San Joaquin Valley.
An ecosystem approach to recovery in the San Joaquin Valley recognizesnot only the common origins and interdependencies of the remnant naturalcommunities, but also the fact that the entire region today is a landscapedominated by human activities. Those activities, while defining andshaping the current ecosystem, have often had a fragmenting rather thanunifying effect. Thus, recovery also is dependent on the cooperationand collaboration of the various stakeholders, in the Valley ecosystem,which include private landowners, local governments and citizens, andState and Federal agencies.
The community-level approach facilitates recovery but does not negatethe need to consider the requirements of each species. Thus, individualrecovery criteria are presented for each of the 11 listed species coveredby this plan to track their progress towards recovery and to ensure thatall of their recovery needs are addressed.
Separate criteria are given in the recovery plan for downlisting 10species from endangered to threatened, for delisting those 10 speciesplus 1 threatened species, and for achieving long-term conservation ofthe 23 species that are not currently listed. Elements common to therecovery criteria of most listed species include:
- protection from development and incompatible uses of the habitat of specified populations representing the full range of genetic and geographic variation in the species;
- development and implementation of appropriate habitat management plans for each species and area identified for protection; and
- self-sustaining status of the specified populations.
Considering that habitat loss is the primary cause of speciesendangerment in the San Joaquin Valley, a central component of speciesrecovery is to establish a network of conservation areas and reservesthat represent all of the pertinent terrestrial and riparian naturalcommunities in the San Joaquin Valley. Habitat protection does notnecessarily require land acquisition or easement. The most importantaspect of habitat protection is that land uses maintain or enhancespecies habitat values. Elements 4-6 of the recovery strategy addressthis issue.
Existing natural lands, occupied by the covered species, are targetedfor conservation in preference to unoccupied natural land or retiredfarmland. This greatly reduces or eliminates the need for expensiveand untested restoration work to make the land suitable for habitationby these species. Many of the covered species are concentrated inthe natural communities that persist in the San Joaquin Valley. Therecommended approach is to protect land in large blocks whenever possible.Large blocks minimize edge effects, increase the likelihood that ecosystemfunctions will remain intact, and facilitate management.
Another recommendation of the plan is that, whenever possible,blocks of conservation lands should be connected by natural land or landwith compatible uses to allow for movement of species between blocks.Linkages are proposed both on the floor of the San Joaquin Valley and infoothills along the margins of the Valley. Few Valley floor linkagesexist at this time; restoration of continuous corridors or islands ofsuitable vegetation that can act as "stepping stones" will be necessaryto provide movement corridors. Natural land remaining along the fringesof the San Joaquin Valley will provide both habitat and linkages.
Smaller specialty reserves also are a necessary part of the proposedhabitat protection network. They are important for recovery of certainspecies with highly restricted geographic ranges or specialized habitatrequirements. These reserves may be small areas surrounded by developedland, or they may be portions of larger conservation areas that requirespecial management.
In formulating the community-level strategy, greater emphasis wasplaced on two groups of species due to their pivotal roles in eitherconservation (umbrella species) or ecosystem dynamics (keystonespecies).
The San Joaquin kit fox occurs in nearly all the natural communitiesused by other species featured in this plan, but these others are muchmore restricted in their choice of habitats. The broad distribution andrequirement for relatively large areas of habitat means conservationof the kit fox will provide an umbrella of protection for many otherspecies that require less habitat. Therefore, the San Joaquin kit foxis an umbrella species for purposes of this recovery plan. Many of itsneeds are given higher priority in recovery actions at the regional level(i.e., the ecosystem level) than those of other species because it isone of the species that will be hardest to recover; fulfilling the fox'sneeds also meets those of many other species.
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