S. Africa Seeks World Heritage Status for Rock Art Park
8/20/99
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Title: S. Africa Seeks World Heritage Status for Rock Art Park
Source: Environment News Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 20, 1999
PIETERMARITZBURG, South Africa, August 20, 1999 (ENS) - The KwaZulu-
Natal Nature Conservation Service (NCS) has nominated for United
Nations World Heritage site status the Drakensberg Park, recently
renamed the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park.
The Park contains some 600 rock shelters in which are found over
35,000 individual images painted by San hunter-gatherers. This is the
richest San rock art area in Africa and one of the richest rock art
centres found anywhere in the world.
There are 190 plant species which occur only in the Park, as well as
35 amphibian, bird and mammal species that are South African grassland
and montane natives unique to the area. There are antelope species
such as grey rhebok, common and mountain reedbuck, eland, grey duiker,
oribi and klipspringer. Jackals and chacma baboon inhabit the park.
Birds to look out for are the black eagle and the rare lammergeyer.
The nomination proposal has been submitted by the South African
Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism to the UNESCO World
Heritage Council in Paris.
The uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park is a wilderness area of outstanding
natural beauty, unique plant and animal life, and has the greatest
concentration of San rock-art in Africa, the Nature Conservation
Service proposal states. It also serves as an important water
producing region.
World Heritage Site status will increase the level of protection for
the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park while cultivating an increased
awareness and pride of ownership in all South Africans, the NCS says.
"It may also bring increased tourism and associated benefits such as
improved employment possibilities and income, as well as improved
development opportunities," according to the Service.
The Drakensberg is an outstanding example of an escarpment mountain
formation where a continuous process of erosion has exposed a 200
million year-old geological sequence of sandstones, shales and basalt.
As a major component of the Afro-montane biome, it has unique
altitudinally-zoned vegetation communities of high plant-species
richness, from the alpine-tundra flora at high elevations to the
lower-lying, grasslands as well as a great diversity of wetland types.
The uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park nomination proposal presents the area
as both a natural and cultural World Heritage property.
This mixture of attributes gives the park outstanding universal value
as only 20 of the 582 World Heritage sites inscribed to date combine
both aspects - the natural and the cultural.
Steps are underway to prepare a complementary proposal for the
Sehlabathebe National Park in Lesotho. Approval of both parks could
result in a transfrontier World Heritage Site.