African nations create giant game park (Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa)
UPI ^ | Aug. 17


Posted on 08/17/2006 2:02:12 PM PDT by nickcarraway


Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa have opened the borders between parks in all three countries to create the largest transnational game park in Africa.

The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which is expected to eventually grow to cover 16,000 square miles, combines South Africa's Kruger National Park, Mozambique's Limpopo National Park and Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou National Park, The Times of London reported Thursday.

The presidents of all three countries gathered to witness the opening of the Giriyondo border between the Kruger and Limpopo parks.

"The Giriyondo access facility ... is just the beginning of a new era when we will bring down the colonial fences which divided our nations over several centuries," said South African President Thabo Mbeki. "Today, we take yet another step to free ourselves from the chains of our past and open up to our peoples and wild animals the spaces of freedom as nature has intended."

Mbeki said he expects the park to be a major tourist attraction when South Africa is the site of the World Cup in 2010.

How many more thousands of square miles well be made off limits for hunters and how many millions of dollars will be lost.

What do you guy think.

For full details go to www.peaceparks.org

These TFCA's have been in the pipeline for years but some take a while to come to fruition.

There are already a few that are functioning/proclaimed.

I took Prof. Willem van Riet (the foundation CEO) on a 'game drive' in Pilanesberg when I was a young 22 year old student....interesting man and not much I could tell him obviously! He is alss very much into his WW kayaking.

Kayaker or anyone, just curious which generates the most revenue for Africa as a hole, is it park tourism or hunting?

RayRay,

Don't quote me on this, but I would say tourism by far in most areas. Hunting definately creates a huge csh inflow and in some areas in some countries is higher BUT I think on a country level, tourism wins hands down.
For example. SA and Aus have been posting the best arrival increases in the world in the last 2 years or so. I recently read that Africa as a continent had the best tourist arrival increses in the world in 2005 (followed by Asia). Huntesr spend more per captia than the average tourist but the numbers compared to regular visitors just don't compete!

Ther role of these TFCA's is multi-fold. Hunting in them? In most no, but alreday in the proposed Limpopo-Shashe TFCA there is active hunting in the Zim portion. With these parks the benefit to hunters may be the areas adjcent to parks, the 'conservation buffers' if you will. Due to the parks, the spin off effect of 'adding' to these areas by adjacent land owners/communities will create hunting zones.

A research area I would like to pick at the end of next year is using land claims in SA as protected areas and hunting areas by the new owners. Its has happended already in SA (I was in contact with some guys who help land claimants in KZN with a small project).

Kayaker, thanks for the reply. I really didn't know either way, safaris are so expensive I thought it possible the money would make up for the fewer visits.