Two adult male cheetah were released on the Eastern Shores of the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park on Sunday 7 September marking the return of the world’s fastest cat to a wilderness where they were last seen about 100 years ago.
The return of these animals to the St Lucia Wetlands took place at the end of a major conference in the park where scientists and community leaders had gathered for three days – in preparation for the World Parks Congress – to discuss key issues relating to wildlife conservation and ways in which protected areas can contribute to economic growth and job-creation.
The two cats of are the first of six to be introduced by the park authority in an effort to create a viable coalition of cheetah on the shores of the wetlands from where they disappeared in the early 1900s. The big cats were shot as vermin by cattle farmers and their rangeland was transformed by various commercial forms of land use.
The cheetah release was timed to mark the end of a three-day conference in which academics and community leaders had gathered at Cape Vidal in the St Lucia Wetlands Park to discuss a range of issues related to conservation and local economic development.
The Cape Vidal gathering was held in the run-up to the World Parks Congress that will take place in Durban this week where about 2500 conservationists, scientists and development workers from around the world gather to debate key issues relating to protected areas. The World Parks Congress is held once every 10 years and the key theme at this event is how game reserves can generate benefits for citizens who live outside the boundaries of protected areas.
A key message coming out of the Cape Vidal meeting was a plea to the South African government from people living on the borders of game reserves and national parks to make a concerted effort to ensure that the country’s people-friendly conservation measures are converted from policy into practice.
Dr Kenton Miller, a key organizer of the World Parks Congress, in a keynote address to the Cape Vidal meeting noted that more than 10% of the earth’s land is now under conservation, making the protection of wilderness the second biggest form of rural land use in the world after agriculture. He said this posed a number of serious challenges to practitioners who want to conserve nature while improving the lives of people who live in wilderness areas.
The gathering was also opened by Dr David Sheppard, head of the World Conservation Union – IUCN programme on protected areas and Secretary General of the 2003 World Parks Congress. ‘With the increase in protected areas both in number and extent there is a necessity for new institutions backed by good science,” said Dr Sheppard. He argued that conservation today required novel partnerships between governments, non government organizations, the private sector and citizens’ organizations in order to meet the management challenges they face today.
Dr Francesco Banderin, director of Unesco’s World Heritage Centre, told the gathering that ‘without development we cannot even talk about conservation — unless we link conservation to communities living around parks there isn’t a chance of success in the long-term effort (to conserve biodiversity).”
He added that South Africa’s World Heritage Convention Act, which governs the management of World Heritage Sites in this country, was a prime example of the kinds of new and adaptive policies required to meet this challenge. The legislation attempts to create a framework to balance development and conservation. Unesco is using this legislation as a model of best practise for the management of other World Heritage Sites in the developing world.
But leaders from rural communities who live on the borders of national parks in South Africa noted that although South Africa had made a series of reforms in conservation policies aimed at alleviating poverty through the protection of biodiversity, these were not being properly implemented in all parts of the country.
‘We need to move from paying lip-service and saying the right things to putting the right things into practise,” said Livingstone Maluleke, a civic leader from the Makuleke people who were removed from the northern part of the Kruger National Park and have now been given back ownership of their land in the park.
The Greater St Lucia Wetland Park – where the Cape Vidal meeting and cheetah release took place – is one of South Africa’s first three World Heritage Sites. Andrew Zaloumis, CEO of the Wetlands Park Authority, told the gathering that key challenge in park management is to ‘develop to conserve” thus putting an emphasis on the alleviation of poverty and regional economic development as the most effective way to ensure the survival and regeneration of St Lucia’s biodiversity. The Wetlands Park Authority is implementing this broad vision in partnership with EKZN Wildlife who have built a solid reputation in conservation management.
The Wetlands Authority recently announced that it has attracted development proposals from 21 tourism companies to develop eight sites in the park. The proposals will lead to a total investment of some R450 million and will result in the creation of about 1500 full time jobs and significant local ownership in these new businesses. It has also invested some R650 million of public finance in the development of new roads, fences, tourism facilities, new land incorporations and removal of alien vegetation and commercial plantations in the park and surrounding region.
Dr David Sheppard noted that although 10 percent of the world’s land was under conservation many parks and game reserves have been declared in name only. Delegates to the Cape Vidal conference noted that lessons learnt from the St Lucia Wetland Park and other protected areas where real rather than paper parks are being built would provide key inputs to the World Parks Congress.