African Wildlife Environment Issue 75 FINAL

CONSERVATION

15 000 hectares added to the Protected Area. They helped set up the Governance structures and produced a strategic management plan for the area including a conservation plan and vegetation map produced as well as a state of the art Environmental Information System. This was the first contractual

Game Reserve and Thanda Private Game Reserve in Kwazulu-Natal and other protected areas in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape provinces via private, state and community partnerships. There are a number of new additional areas identified by the National Protected Areas Expansion Strategy which could be considered

area incorporated into the Protected Area. They also helped established the Plains of the Camdeboo Private Nature Reserve which is situated in the Great Karoo region in the south-east interior of South Africa in the Eastern Cape Province. It covers 8,827 hectares, and was formed in 2009 through the consolidation of 12 separate farm portions. The primary aim of the reserve is to conserve, and where necessary, restore the natural landscape and its constituent habitats, species, ecological process and cultural heritage. The reserve is also included in the Mountain Zebra Camdeboo Protected Environment , proclaimed in March 2016. The WWF Black Rhino

for Black Rhino range expansion and certainly would have been part of their distribution in the distant past. These include the Baviaans-Addo focus area in the Eastern Cape; Eastern Kalahari Bushveld; the Kamiesberg Bushmanland Augrabies focus area in the Northern Cape; the Central Bushveld Bioregion in Limpopo province and the Upper and Lower Karoo. A large number of threatened and vulnerable vegetation types in these regions could be still be protected via the BRREP and represent an encouraging opportunity.

Range Expansion P r o g r a m m e (BRREP) aims to increase numbers and growth rate of the critically

endangered Black Rhino via facilitating partnerships between landowners with good Black Rhino habitat and implementing translocation operations to qualifying areas from existing strongholds for the species. Since the project began in 2003, under the leadership of Dr Jacques Flamand, over 12 new Black Rhino populations have been created in South Africa on land totalling over 250,000ha. The programme has helped motivate for protected area consolidation and expansion of Phinda Private Game Reserve , Manyoni Private Game Reserve, Somkhanda Private

© EWT Birds of Prey Working Group

15 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 75 (2020)