What happened to 'Nathi'?

This is not a post to provide answers to complex questions, but merely an observation  I have made over the years of something that I have been taking for granted and which probably points to what is happening around us as time moves on.

‘Nathi’ or the Cape gooseberry was a fruit back in the day growing wild in many parts of where we lived and even in many places we visited in Kenya. It comprised of a bush growing about 3 feet tall and laden with tiny green husks with the fruit quickly growing inside the husk in size before the husk finally shriveling into a brownish color indicating that the fruit had ripened. Then you plucked the fruit alongside the husk (or just picked it straight from the ground where they often fell after ripening) and then peeled it back and hey presto.

The fruit was about the size of a marble and was yellow/gold in color and extremely sweet. Our childhood days were filled with long days during the school holidays and on weekends spent in the bush foraging for this delicacy and we would often carry armloads of them back home to share with other family members!!

Today I see ‘Nathi’ on sale in various supermarkets but back then it seemed to sprout with every rainy season and within a few weeks was heavy with succulent fruit. It was so virulent that you would stumble upon it while in the bush, walking alongside the road, among the growing maize and beans, in a shrubbery of grass and flowers seemingly because it was also a delicacy much liked by a myriad of birds and other small animals no doubt thus aiding in its dispersion whenever they ate the fruit.

But now, it appears that ‘Nathi’ like many other indigenous plant species can no longer be found growing as virulently and as wildly as it once did. Climate change, the greenhouse effect and the effects of human encroachment on the environment means that the birds and other small animals that disperse the seeds of these wild berries are no longer as prevalent as they used to be meaning that the dispersion and dispersal of the life giving seeds is no longer as wide spread.

Could this be a harbinger of things to come? Could this be the time when the survival of ‘Nathi’ and other wild fruits is pre-disposed to genetic engineering? Could we be going the GMO way in sustaining the once thriving indigenous berries? Are there any truly wild spots left in our country or is ‘Nathi’ doomed to go the way of the dodo?  Is this the curse of our changing lifestyle and changing weather patterns? Of pollution and the greenhouse gas effect such that the diversity and purity required sustaining a healthy population of wild berries no longer exists?

Cape Gooseberry fruit about to ripen

What does this portend for the future of mankind in regards to the biodiversity of our world today?

Does it mean that soon those organisms that rely on plant and animal materials of  plants going into extinction will themselves also face their day of reckoning?

What can be done to reverse this state of affairs so that our world continues to thrive and the delicate balance to sustain an already fragile ecology is maintained??