South Africa, neighbours sign cross-border park pact
Copyright © 2000 Reuters
November 11, 2000
KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa, Nov 10 (Reuters) - South Africa and neighbouring Zimbabwe and Mozambique on Friday signed an agreement to create a cross-border conservation park aimed at promoting biodiversity and ecotourism in the region.
``This Gaza-Kruger-Gonarezhou (GKG) transfrontier park will be the world's greatest wildlife destination,'' South African Environmental and Tourism Affairs Minister Valli Moosa said at the signing ceremony in the Kruger National Park.
``It contributes immensely towards...regional economic cooperation,'' he said.
Mozambique's Minister for Agriculture and Regional Development, Helder Muteia, said he hoped the park would be a magnet for tourists.
The GKG park will cover more than 35,000 square kilometres (13,500 sq miles), making it one of the largest conservation areas in the world. It is home to 116 species of reptiles, 147 mammals, 505 kinds of bird and more than 2,000 plant species.
The park consists of South Africa's Kruger National Park, Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou National Park and an area in Mozambique known as Coutada 16.
Coutada 16 is currently a hunting concession, but Muteia said it would be declared a conservation area early next year.
FENCES DOWN IN A YEAR
Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou Park has no border with Kruger, but a small corridor will be established to link the two.
Tourism officials hope the park will build on the extensive tourist infrastructure in South Africa's world-class Kruger park, which has about one million visitors a year, 40 percent of them from abroad.
Moosa said he hoped the fence separating Kruger's eastern border from Mozambique would be removed in about a year's time.
Linking the parks will extend the range available to Kruger's many animals and take pressure off its 9,000 plus elephant population, which many scientists say has reached its capacity given the available habitat.
But a number of thorny issues are yet to be resolved.
Mozambique lacks adequate law enforcement for dealing with poachers or illegal tree felling and the country has untold landmines beneath its soil, a legacy of its brutal civil war.
Mozambique is also one of the world's poorest countries and work-seekers often try to enter South Africa via the Kruger park.
In Zimbabwe, a wave of lawlessness linked to a state-sponsored land grab has led to widespread reports of an upsurge in poaching.
But Zimbabwean Environment and Tourism Minister Francis Nhema told Reuters there had been no decline in wildlife security.
``There has been no rise in poaching in Zimbabwe this year and you cannot link poaching incidents with the land issue,'' he said.