Land stewardship is ‘key to conservation’

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with RICHARD COMPTON

THE future of conservation is now firmly in the hands of communal, state-owned and private land owners.

Against a backdrop of increasing concern with the ongoing loss of natural resources in KZN, such as the destruction of wetlands, pollution of rivers and estuaries and loss of grasslands and indigenous vegetation, this week saw Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife (EKZNW) announce dramatic new developments.

Dr Meshack Radebe, MEC for Environmental Affairs and Agriculture said the provincial government, through Ezemvelo’s Bio-Diversity Stewardship Programme, is set on protecting its remaining critical natural resources and bio-diversity – half of which is threatened with irreversible transformation over the next 15 years.

Some 100 000ha of new conservation land will come under some category of formal conservation protection by the first quarter of 2014, while triple this entire area (300 000ha) is busy being negotiated with various landowners.

Radebe has just signed off on six new parcels of conservation land, totalling some 32 000ha.

Already, 37 000ha has been incorporated within the Bio-Diversity Stewardship programme whilst a further 30 000ha been submitted to the EKZNW Board for ratification.

‘Stewardship’ is an Ezemvelo management tool whereby landowners can voluntarily cede areas of their land within various categories of legal protection in order to protect this land for conservation purposes.

Radebe said Stewardship offered the most cost-effective alternative for the expansion of conservation land in the province.

‘Without Stewardship and partnering with landowners, it is almost impossible to expand our conservation footprint.

‘It is prohibitively expensive and almost impossible for government agencies such as Ezemvelo to find the necessary funds to purchase and manage new conservation land for new game reserves and protected areas.’

Successful

In achieving this goal of proclaiming 100 000ha of new conservation land by 2014, Ezemvelo will have succeeded in establishing some 11 new Nature Reserves and four Protected Environments, both categories of Stewardship protection.

Significantly, this expansion means by financial year-end (April 2014) the organisation will have fulfilled a five-year long Protected Area Expansion Programme goal, ensuring that 9% of the province’s land mass will be under some form of conservation protection.

CEO for Ezemvelo Dr Bandile Mkhize said the dynamics of 21stC conservation had shifted with its future footprint involving the encouragement of private and communal landowners to engage with this Stewardship programme.

“Aside from protecting our bio-diversity, KZN’s natural resources play a variety of critical roles in our everyday lives.

‘They also represent the natural capital of the poor, in so far as their protection helps provide our communities with these commodities.’

One of the biggest challenges, he said, lay in encouraging owners or occupiers of traditional land into identifying that conservation had a strong developmental backbone.

Describing this as a ‘key focus’, Dr Mkhize said local people, instead of practising subsistence agriculture, can be assisted by Ezemvelo in using their land more profitably under the Stewardship conservation umbrella.

‘Depending on the type of land, local people can enter into one of these Stewardship agreements with us to explore land usage options such as wildlife management, for example, and developing the hunting and tourism revenue streams that would accrue from this.’

Greg Martindale, Manager of Ezemvelo’s Stewardship unit said: ‘There are genuinely huge possibilities in bringing further land under conservation management in KZN. And one of our main focuses lies in the fact that some 53% of all high priority and conservation-worthy biodiversity is located outside our existing protected areas.’

He agreed that one of the many promising areas of Stewardship lay in its ability to foster job-creation, especially on land claimed through the land restitution process.

Martindale said two pertinent examples of Stewardship could be seen at the Nambiti Game Reserve in Ladysmith (a successful 8000ha land claim) and the Umgano community project near Coleford in the southern area of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park.

Other projects being negotiated include a 13 000ha land restitution site in Babanango whilst the popular Phinda Reserve, up to a third of which is owned by two communities, is also being investigated for inclusion under Stewardship.