Living with the Beasts by Chris Du Plessis

But it seems to be a developing trend in South Africa...

Nearly seventy years after the first proposal for a Garden Route National Park along the southern South African coastline was first put forward, it has become a reality. The area will consist of 120000 hectares and will incorporate the existing world-renowned Tsistikamma and Wilderness National Parks as well as another 51,500ha of newly proclaimed land.

The park will span two provinces (Western and Eastern Cape) and hosts six municipalities including that of well-known coastal towns such as George, Knysna and Plettenberg Bay (now Bitou).

The move forms part of strategy to develop protected areas in South Africa to the point where they cover 8% of the country’s total surface. The future of National Parks lies in this sort of combination - with a town in the centre of an unfenced protected area.

For conservation to survive it must have economic value, and partnership with the private sector is essential. The establishment of a national park focusing on conservation without traditional park boundaries or fences will introduce a new era in bioregional conservation management.

In the meantime, Table Mountain National Park above Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town is to be increased to nine times its current size from about 50 hectares to some 450 hectares and the number of animals by between four and five times the present amount.

The aim is to have the area filled with only indigenous animals endemic to the area. In advancement of this goal, Eland, Red Hartebeest and Grysbok will be introduced in accordance with the new park’s grazing capacity and some 300 fallow deer and a herd of black wildebeest not endemic to the region are to be moved from Cape Town to other reserves. The re-fencing would leave the western side running up to Devils Peak open for animals able to negotiate the steep rocky incline.

What today constitutes the Table Mountain National Park was left by Cecil John Rhodes in his will to South Africa as a conservation area. He imagined an area safe from development where people could walk amongst the animals.