Borders to Come Down in Africa's Newest, Biggest Park
© Environment News Service (ENS) 2000
November 13, 2000
KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa, November 13, 2000 (ENS) - Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe have signed an agreement to establish the Gaza-Kruger-Gonarezhou Transfrontier Park, one of the largest conservation areas in the world. At 35,000 square kilometers, it will be Africa's biggest wildlife park.
Government representatives, officials, donors and dignitaries from the three countries gathered at the Skukuza Camp of South Africa's Kruger National Park on Friday to witness the agreement, which commits the three nations to establish the park by 2003. That is when animals and people are expected to be able to move freely across international borders.
The park will encompass the Kruger National Park in South Africa, the Coutada 16 conservation area in Mozambique, and the Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe with a slice of communal land linking it with Kruger.
Friday's agreement marked the latest step in an initiative started in 1990 when World Wide Fund for Nature-South Africa officials met Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano to discuss the possibility of a permanent link being established between some of the protected areas in southern Mozambique and their adjacent counterparts in South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.
The meeting eventually led to the Peace Parks Foundation being set up in 1997 to drive the process of establishing Transfrontier Park Conservation Areas (TFCAs). The foundation worked with governments to raise capital, identify then negotiate the purchase of land, and promote the case for TFCAs nationally and internationally.
South African Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Mohammed Valli Moosa said the Gaza-Kruger-Gonarezhou Transfrontier Park will have two objectives. Firstly, it will promote biodiversity conservation across international boundaries, and secondly, it will revive the socio-economic fortunes of poorer rural communities living in and around the park.
"Private enterprise will be involved extensively in developing and operating the many ecotourism opportunities made available by this initiative," said Moosa. "In developing these ecotourism opportunities, job creation for local communities will be a priority.
"This park will attract international tourism by its sheer size and diversity, and become the symbol of growing cooperation in Southern Africa," said Moosa, who added that Friday's agreement represented "an important moment in the history of our three countries."
A few years ago, such a park would have been unthinkable. Under apartheid, South Africa was in a near state of war with its neighbor Mozambique and regional cooperation was unheard of.
Work on a concept plan and an action plan now begins in earnest to set up a marketing and management policy seen as vital to attract the investment needed to make the park a reality.
As the name suggests, a transfrontier park is different from traditional parks because it straddles international borders. Each country involved formally agrees to manage the park as one integrated unit, according to a streamlined management plan.
Since political boundaries rarely respect ecological systems, transfrontier parks strive to reestablish historical animal migration routes and other ecosystem functions by removing fences and other human barriers so animals can move freely.
Earlier this year, South Africa and Botswana opened the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, the region's first, which crosses the borders of both countries.
When the Gaza-Kruger-Gonarezhou Transfrontier Park opens, tourists will be able to drive across international boundaries into adjoining conservation areas in the three countries with minimal fuss.
In addition to game viewing opportunities, visitors will have new attractions including bird rich tropical wetlands, lake cruises and rugged adventure drives. All three governments hope to generate employment by offering cultural experiences via local communities: traditional healers explaining their trade, story telling, foods, dance, music, handicraft and art demonstrations.
"In today’s world, conservation can not be separated from human development, and this has been amply demonstrated in many countries in southern Africa, where conservation that does not consider social and economic factors is doomed to failure," said Mozambican Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development Helder Muteia.The Kruger National Park alone is one of the major areas of vertebrate diversity in southern Africa, with 147 species of mammals, 505 species of birds, 51 fish, 35 amphibians, and 119 reptiles.
It is one of the few protected areas in southern Africa capable of maintaining a natural large carnivore-prey system. Significant populations of mammals include 1,500 lion, 2,000 spotted hyena, 8,320 elephants, 2,200 white rhinos, 250 black rhinos, 32,000 Burchell's zebra, 2,200 hippos, 5,000 giraffe, 1,500 warthog, 16,640 buffalo, 1,500 waterbuck, 14,000 blue wildebeest and more than 100,000 impala.