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Africa News afrol News
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Africa News afrol News
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Misanet.com / IPS, 20 June - In an effort to re-create a huge environmental region in Southern Africa plans are steaming ahead to uproot the border fences between South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe and launch a massive cross-border conservation area. Preparations are being made on all sides of the borders. The Gaza-Krüger-Gonarezhou (GKG) Transfrontier Park, brings together Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou National Park, South Africa's Krüger National Park and Mozambique's Coutada 16, a wildlife area, into a single conservation area that stretches across three international borders. The transfrontier park aims to re-establish ancient animal migration routes, disrupted by fences set up to enforce human political divisions in Africa. The plan is for all three countries to manage the GKG park together, as a single ecological system. This natural system will hopefully strengthen the wildlife of the area and provide a basis for tourism - and then jobs and revenue for the millions of poor rural people that live on the borders of the three national parks. By improving the lives of the poor, the transfrontier park will hopefully encourage them to play an active part in conserving nature in the area, say officials involved with the project. "The development of a single management plan for the transfrontier park, is well underway," says the co-ordinator of the GKG Transfrontier Park, Leo Braack. A section of the Krüger Park that borders on Zimbabwe and Mozambique, known as the Pafuri section, is at the heart of the planned transfrontier park. It is an area of mystical African beauty, with baoab and fever trees, thorny bushes and abundant wildlife. But, poaching in the Pafuri section is on the increase, warn rangers. The extent of poaching activity was visible during a single day last week when game rangers removed over 80 snares from the Pafuri section of the Krüger National Park. Ironically, most of the wire used to make the snares comes from a derelict fence that used to mark the northern border of the Krüger Park - and keep poachers out. The new snares had traces of blood on them - some of the older ones still gripped the dry forelegs of dead animals. The ranger in charge of the Pafuri section, Kobus Wentzle, is urgently pushing for the remains of the fence to be removed from the park. "There will always be poaching, people are poor and they need to eat," says Wentzle. But, he warns that widespread commercial poaching to supply traders, like butchers, could wipe out wildlife in the area. While poachers from Zimbabwe mainly use snares, those from Mozambique are armed with AK47 assault rifles - which makes intercepting and arresting them dangerous work.
Wentzle points out that sometimes juvenile poachers, from Zimbabwe, are deliberately sent into the park, because if they are caught, South African law requires that they be returned to their parents within 12 hours. As a result, they are normally raiding the park again within a day or two. Wentzle is also disturbed by reports of about a thousand self-proclaimed veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war claiming land to live on in the Gonarezhou National Park. "According to the reports we hear, they are eating nothing but meat," he says. The self-styled war veterans have been invading companies, farms and nature reserves in Zimbabwe, claiming they are simply taking back land that was stolen by colonialists. Their actions are one of the primary causes of Zimbabwe's deepening economic and political crises. Braack says his impression is that as the Zimbabwean crises eases, the integrity of the Gonarezhou park will be restored. While present developments are worrying, he does not think they are a major threat to the creation and sustainability of the transfrontier park. The rangers say there is relatively little poaching by South Africans in the area. About a third of the land in the Pafuri section of the park is owned by the Makuleke community, who live just outside Krüger. They were forcibly removed from the park by the former apartheid government in the late 1960s. Their land in the park was returned to them by the present government, and they are trying to develop it as a cultural and tourism destination. They allow very limited trophy hunting in the area, based on a quota of between four and six animals decided on in consultation with the Krüger Park authorities. The money generated from the hunts goes towards community development projects. The Makuleke hope to end the hunts when planned lodge developments in the area start paying-off and providing the community with jobs and revenue. The park is due to be officially opened in April 2002. Braack is confident that all the technical requirements will be in place by then. "Full integration of tourist flows and income will take years," he points out, "but the transfrontier park will be visible by the dropped
fences."
By Paul Stober, IPS
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The Mozambican communities living around the planned park, are apparently not yet fully behind the idea of the GKG transfrontier park. "In a workshop with the communities of the three countries, it became apparent that the consultation process in Mozambique needs to be shifted up a gear. A project manager will be appointed from July 2001, to engage the local community as a matter of urgency," says Braack. 