Jim Cason
10 February 2003
interview
Washington, DC — The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, spanning the borders of South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, is the largest, and most ambitious effort in Africa to combine conservation, environmental protection, tourism and economic development. If successful, the Great Limpopo Park will be the world's largest game park, a huge 3.5 million hectare area incorporating what is today South Africa's Kruger National Park, Mozambique's Limpopo National Park and the Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe.
But the challenges are immense. The presidents of the three countries signed the treaty formally establishing this new super park in December 2002 and several kilometers of fencing between the Mozambican and South African side have been symbolically cut down. But the park itself will probably not expand to its full boundaries for at least five years.
Nonetheless, the new park is already being offered as a model for future development projects in Africa. "The park will open to the world the biggest ever animal kingdom, increasing foreign investment into the region and creating much-needed jobs for our people, further acting as a symbol of peace and unity for the African people", says Mohammed Valli Moosa, the South African Environment Minister. South Africa is actively promoting the establishment of several "peace parks" across frontiers in southern Africa.
The potential benefits of the new Transfrontier park for the wildlife population, for the people who live in the area and for the region as a whole are tremendous, agrees Eddie Koch, a director of Mafisa Research and Planning, a South African agency specializing in ecotourism.
But in an interview with allAfrica, Koch points out that before the Great Limpopo Park can become a model, the governments involved will have to overcome a series of serious obstacles: There is still no plan for how to deal with the 20,000 Mozambicans living within the existing borders of the park, the plans for economic development projects to benefit local communities have not been developed and the political turmoil in Zimbabwe is actively destroying the wildlife population that was to be preserved by this park.
When the three presidents signed the treaty formally establishing this park in December 2002, there was a lot of talk about the potential for economic development and the other great social benefits of the park. But from an ecological point of view is this huge park a good idea?
The theory is a good one from a number of ecological points of view. It massively expands the protected areas in southern Africa and converts small, fenced-in protected areas into large eco-systems. So that is, in theory, a good objective.
In particular, it makes a huge difference for the Kruger National Park in terms of elephant management. The Kruger Park is facing a massive dilemma currently: how to deal with a very quickly growing elephant population. Its elephant herd has grown from 7,000 to 11,000 over the last couple of years because Sanpark, the South African government conservation agency, about three years ago took a decision to stop culling.
They used to shoot a few hundred elephants a year in order to keep the population. It was a very, very controversial exercise. It involved an undoubted amount of cruelty to elephants, and the herds from which they were shot, and it was never scientifically proven that the figure of 7,000 was the correct population for Kruger. So there was a huge outcry and Sanpark decided to stop culling.
One reason for the Transfrontier Park was to expand the amount of range land for elephants. So that the elephants could in fact roam freely rather than reach a population size that would force the park authorities to take this very controversial practice to keep the population down.
But it sounds as if all that will achieve is to buy time. Won't the herd keep growing and eventually become too large even for this larger park?
This buys a couple of decades. In the meantime there are a whole set of other programs underway to deal with elephant population. It is a big problem for African protected areas, southern African protected areas in particular.
So there are definite advantages in ecological terms.
There are undoubted advantages in ecological terms. But remember that in fact this Transfrontier Park is not a reality. All that has happened is that a couple of kilometers of fencing have been taken down.
It is a symbolic gesture that the governments have taken, and a treaty has been signed. Even on the ecological side, there are massive sets of issues that need to be dealt with properly before the park can become a reality.
For example, there is a big and undecided issue about where to place the fence. If the fence between Kruger and Mozambique is going to come down, is there going to be another fence on the Mozambican side of the big park running down the Limpopo river? The western boundary of the new super park, the Transfrontier Park, is the Limpopo River in Mozambique, which is unfenced. On the ecological front there are huge problems with fencing because the animals, when the park is repopulated, will require access to that river. As of yet there is no answer about whether or not the park will be fenced, or left an open system.
It is important to remember that while the objective is noble, the effort required to make that a reality is huge.
Do you think they can have the first part of the park in place by the end of 2003?
I don't think so. In fact there was an attempt to translocate some elephants around the middle of last year. That has been put on hold because the planners of the initiative, the three governments and the Transfrontier Park foundation, neglected to consult with the people living in the park who justifiably complained bitterly that, all of a sudden, elephants were likely to be in their back yards and they had to deal with them. They complained and the ministers, the South African minister in particular, put a hold on the elephant transfer.
What they have done is built a big enclosure, about 30,000 hectares and are slowly moving smaller species - planes game, zebras, wart hogs - to that large enclosure on the Mozambique side. But that enclosure should not be confused with the big park. The Kruger is 2 million hectares. But it is symbolically important, because it is the beginning of a relocation of game back into Mozambique where these species have been decimated.
So the framework conditions have been set, the treaty and the set of cooperative management practices have been put in place. But any notion that we would have the biggest game park in the next five years is fanciful.
What kinds of other issues must they deal with?
These are huge issues, just on the ecological side. And so far we're excluding Zimbabwe. We are just talking about South Africa and Mozambique. Zimbabwe presents a massive set of biological, ecological, political and social problems.
The reality on the ground in Zimbabwe is that land invasions are causing the opposite of what the Park was intended for. There is a massive, massive wave of poaching and destruction of wildlife in the very area that should link the Gonarezhou Park to the Kruger Park. And that is directly related to the Zimbabwe government's policy of condoning land invasions.
There is a huge paradox at play: while the Zimbabwe government has signed a treaty to initiate the Transfrontier Park, it is promoting a land redistribution policy on the ground which is undermining the underlying themes behind the park being created. Some estimates are that up to half of the Zimbabwe wildlife population has been killed since the land invasions began. That is an estimate put forward by the Zimbabwean Agricultural Union, which does represent white farmers who are losing their land, so it may or may not be an objective analysis. But it is undoubtedly the case that the wildlife population is being affected.
That is happening in the very area where this so-called peace park is being planned. For me and a number of commentators, this calls into question the South African government's policy toward Zimbabwe. Where, on the one hand, it is very keen to see the establishment of the Transfrontier Park, on the other hand it has this policy of appeasement toward the Zimbabwean government. South Africa's policy toward the Zimbabwean government and Robert Mugabe is undoubtedly at odds with its policy toward the Transfrontier Park. It is a contradiction.
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