Month: February 2011

Lungile Ntuli (Ezimvelo KZN Wildlife’s Stewardship Programme), Vusi Gumbi, Nkosi Zeblon Gumbi, Dave Gilroy (Wildlands Conservation Trust) and Nathi Gumbi signing the Stewardship Agreement that led to the Proclamation of the community reserve in 2010.

For the first time in South Africa’s  history, a tract of land restored to a rural  community in terms of government’s land reform policy has been proclaimed a protected area. The proclamation falls under Ezemvelo’s biodiversity stewardship programme, and the Wildlands Conservation Trust (Wildlands) has facilitated the  process which involves unprecedented co-operation between public and private conservation and business interests. Somkhanda now enjoys the highest possible conservation status, along with permanent protection against a change in land use.
According Wildlands’ Director of Conservation Programmes, Dr Roelie Kloppers, Ezemvelo’s Stewardship program has worked very well with land in individual private hands. “Rate rebates and other financial incentives bring significant benefits to landowners. But while communally owned land gets the same incentives, tax deductions mean nothing unless the land earns income for the community. In this case, the community has agreed to put the land – 16 000 ha of the 20 000ha that was given to them – under conservation in the belief that land under conservation provides jobs and broad-scale community development.”

Somkhanda will create a vital corridor linking the Zululand Rhino Reserve and Pongola Nature reserve, and Kloppers says the ultimate vision is to connect this area with St Lucia and Swaziland reserves. He says the priority will be to get Somkhanda managed to the same standard as the adjoining private reserves to enable the dropping of fences between properties and the appointment of a single management authority. “This is one of the last big areas in KwaZulu-Natal that can potentially create migratory corridors between reserves for large mammals, such as critically endangered black rhino and African wild dogs.”

Apart from the support given to this initiative by Wildlands and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, project partners, the eLan Property Group has drafted the integrated management  plan for the reserve – an essential component in the process of protected area declaration and critical for the future management of the reserve.

According to eLan, the development of Somkhanda will see the upliftment of the Gumbi community. Through skills development and input from the eLan Group, this estate will essentially create 200 permanent jobs and an annual income of R6, 8million for the previously disadvantaged community.

In March 2010 Wildlands brokered a ground-breaking deal with Zululand Hunters allowing them to  take over the management of the reserve in partnership with the local community. Over the next ten years Zululand Hunters will capacitate the local community to effectively manage the reserve and its commercial activities. At the same time, they will pay an annual lease fee to the community in exchange for sustainable use rights on the reserve and will also make an annual donation towards community development projects. At the end of the lease period Zululand Hunters will have stocked the game numbers to the full carrying capacity allowed on the property thus handing the local community a well-developed resource for eco-tourism development.

Riverine Forests such as this one on the Mkhuze floodplain in northern KwaZulu Natal form part of a vital catchment area for the iSimangaliso wetland system.

Picture taken by:  Maryann Rivers-Moore

World Wetlands Day is marked annually to raise awareness of wetlands and their importance to both people and the environment, and the Wildlands Conservation Trust supports the need for a dedicated day to highlight the need to preserve these valuable ecosystems for the persistence of biodiversity.

The date of 2 February each year was selected for World Wetlands Day because it marks the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on 2 February in 1971. Every year the Ramsar Convention, as it is now known, selects a theme on specific types of wetlands or aspects of wetland management. The theme for this year is Forests for water and wetlands, chosen to tie in with 2011 being the United Nations International Year of Forests.

Forests are linked to the provision of goods and services such as timber, food and protection from wind and soil erosion.  They also provide vital ecosystem functions like watershed and flood control, carbon storage and production of oxygen as well as air pollution filtering.  The conservation of wetlands is directly linked to healthy forests in catchments areas, where water drains into streams, rivers and lakes.

The Greening Your Future Programme, Wildlands’ forest restoration programme and climate change mitigation initiative, works towards restoring or establishing forests and building carbon sinks while focusing on community upliftment. Projects have to date been established at the Ongoye Forest and Mkhuze Floodplain in Zululand and Inanda Mountain near Durban. Wildlands is also the implementing partner in the Buffelsdraai Landfill Site Community Reforestation Project run by the eThekwini Municipality.

The Mkhuze River floodplain is a vital catchment area for the iSimangaliso wetland system (a World Heritage Site) which contains dune, swamp and coastal forests. Wildlands began the The Mkhuze Floodplain Reforestation project after developing its Indigenous Trees for Life Programme in KwaJobe, a community living and farming on the floodplain on the northern boundary of Mkhuze Game Reserve.

Through this livelihoods programme over 60 000 indigenous trees have been grown since 2004 and exchanged for goods such as food and clothing. In 2007 Wildlands engaged KwaJobe farmers, and there are currently over 300 landowners involved in planting these indigenous trees on their land, receiving a fee for planting and a further fee for every tree that is nurtured and maintained per quarter thereafter.

Mr Thulani Mafuleka is a Field Monitor for Greening Your Future in the Mkhuze reforestation programme. “Before the project I was not aware of how important trees were; I was cutting trees left and right. Trees protect us from wind, my house can be taken away by a strong wind, but trees act as a windbreak. Also some indigenous trees use less water than alien plants, and I did not know that before.”

Mr Andrew Whitley, Programme Manager for the Greening Your Future Programme, explains the Wildlands Conservation Trust’s vision for the project. “We want to plant as many trees as possible onto the Mkhuze floodplain with the aim of restoring some of the lost ecosystem functions and create a buffer to protect the forest that still remains in the area. It has taken time to engage the broader community to garner interest in and support for the project. We are now in a position to target particular areas on the floodplain.”