Green light for landmark African nature park (South Africa)
Melanie Gosling, Independent Online
December 12 2006
Five southern African countries have signed an agreement to establish the biggest conservation area in the world - a massive transfrontier national park 14 times the size of the Kruger National Park and almost as big as Italy.
The Peace Parks Foundation has described the move as the most significant conservation effort undertaken in Africa in the last 100 years.
Called the Kavango-Zambezi trans-frontier conservation area, the park will be situated in the Okavango and Zambezi river basins and will cover an area of 287 132 square kilometres. It is likely to be formally established in 2010.
The announcement was made on Monday by the Peace Parks Foundation. The governments of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe signed the memorandum of understanding at a ceremony at the Victoria Falls in which they committed themselves to working together to establish the park.
Werner Myburgh, project manager of Peace Parks Foundation, said on Monday: "From a conservation perspective, this is the most significant effort in Africa in the last 100 years."
The park will link 36 national parks, game reserves, community conservancies and game management areas. Some of the most notable of these are the Caprivi Strip, the Chobe National Park, the Okavanga Delta, which is the largest Ramsar site in the world, and the Victoria Falls, a World Heritage Site and one of the seven natural wonders of the world.
The park will have about 250 000 elephants, the largest elephant population in the world, and may reduce the pressure to cull elephant populations.
While the primary function of trans-frontier parks is conservation of the natural environment, they also have spin-offs of tourism and job creation.
"The main function of such a park is of course conservation, primarily because it creates ecological linkages that cross international borders and allows movement of wildlife across these barriers. It is vital to secure these links. But if managed well, these parks can have major tourist spin-offs.
"One of the reasons is that it allows freer movement of tourists between game areas. For instance, if a tourist is in Zambia and wants to go the Caprivi now, they will have to go through about four international border posts, but once the Kavango-Zambezi is established, tourists could move there freely," Myburgh said.
He said the establishment of the trans-frontier park may give elephant culling "a breathing space".
"One research model says that if elephants move over large areas between water points, there is a natural dying off of youngsters, which doesn't happen now in the restricted areas. There are about 120 000 elephants in Botswana alone, about 10 000 in Kafue, which is about twice the size of Kruger and virtually none in Angola. Once the transfrontier park is established, the elephants will be able to move from one country to another.
But first the fences have to come down, the landmines removed and the ribbon development of people along rivers and roads must stop.
"It is very challenging, but very exciting. We already have a major potential donor in the form of the German Development Bank.
"This is unusual, as normally one has to have the product before one gets the funding," Myburgh said.
This is one of 20 existing and potential trans-frontier parks in the Southern African Development Community.
The SADC Protocol on Wildlife Conservation and Law Enforcement of 1999 defines a trans-frontier park as a large ecological region that straddles the boundaries of two or more countries, encompassing one or more protected areas, as well as multiple resource areas.
The parks are also designed to lead to enhancement of socio-economic development in the region through nature-based or wildlife tourism, and to promote a culture of peace and regional co-operation.
Article at the following link:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=84&art_id=vn20061212015641515C722527
