African Wildlife Environment Issue 75 FINAL

CONSERVATION

The Addo National Park represents a successful example of proactive expansion and consolidation of neighbouring parcels of land for conservation and sustainable tourism

protected area expansion in South Africa. The IBAs have been defined based on certain criteria such as threatened status of specific species, range and biome restriction and congregation behaviour. Of the 112 IBAs designated, 50% are fully protected (including at least 10 National Parks 32 formal Nature Reserves/ Game Reserves), 24% have partial protection and 26% are unprotected. The latter represent areas which could be promoted for formal protection, such as Hlatikulu Valley in Kwazulu-Natal, P olokwane Nature Reserve in Limpopo, the Ingula Nature Reserve in the Free State, Pondoland Cape Vulture colony in the Eastern Cape, the Olifant River Estuary and Berg River Estuary in the Western Cape and Spitskop Dam in the Northern Cape. Over the past decade BirdLife South Africa has been working with partners to attain legal protection for priority IBAs by means of Biodiversity Stewardship, which may include providing fiscal benefits to Landowners for designating their areas for conservation. The first success being the declaration of the Chrissiemeer Protected Environment in 2014. Biodiversity Stewardship is increasingly being promoted as a model for enhancing collaboration among the various stake-holders involved in protected area expansion. The Biodiversity Stewardship approach to securing protection for land with important biodiversity elements is via agreements with private and communal landowners driven by conservation authorities and supported by NGOs. With an emphasis on ‘co-management’, the general process includes the establishment/ maintenance of provincial working groups to ensure open communication, joint identification of spatial priorities and capacity of parties, collaborative development of provincial protected area expansion strategies and associated implementation strategies, the delegation of specific roles and responsibilities described in formal agreements, the lobbying for

resources and project implementation and reporting. There are different types of biodiversity stewardship agreements dependingon thebiodiversity importance and a trade-off between restrictions of land use and benefits to landowner. These range from long-term statutory agreements under NEMPAA for Nature Reserves and Protected Environments), Biodiversity Management Agreements under NEMBA, formal biodiversity agreements under contract law and informal and non-contractual agreements for other conservation areas. The merger between DEFF and DAFF also incorporates the important contributions that the forestry sector has made towards protected areas expansion. Sappi Forests for example manages up to 138,000 hectares as natural habitat for biodiversity conservation. Using Stewardship as the primary mechanism a number of Important Conservation Areas with high conservation value have been prioritized for protection. Forestry South Africa under the guidance of SANBI’s Grassland programme to mainstream biodiversity in the forestry sector has motivated for the declaration of a number of grassland sites as protected areas in terms of section 23 of the Protected Areas Act. This included 37 sites covering more than 44,000ha and included the following areas (managed under Sappi Forests): Ngodwana River Valley Nature Reserve, Mount Morgan Nature Reserve, Oosterbeek Nature Reserve and Angle Ridge Nature Reserve in Mpumalanga and Clairmont Mountain Nature Reserve in Kwazulu-Natal. While focusing on mitigating the threats from agriculture, habitat destruction to biodiversity, the Forestry sector may help ensure the provision of socio-economic benefits to people via biodiversity stewardship and job creation while maintaining protected areas integrity and expansion. While much of these efforts seem encouraging

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