New reserve to protect more than just wildlife

A recently established nature reserve in the Northern Drakensberg is set to protect vital grasslands, ancient rock art, and water sources, benefitting wildlife and local communities, writes Caitlin Blaser Mapitsa, an associate professor at the Wits School of Governance.

- Caitlin Blaser Mapitsa

South Africa's Drakensberg mountains have a new 6,500 ha nature reserve. The recently established Northern Drakensberg Nature Reserve is working with communities and will preserve ancient rock art, vital grasslands, and water sources for millions of people. It connects a neighbouring World Heritage Site, the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park in KwaZulu-Natal, to another nature reserve, the Sterkfontein Nature Reserve in the Free State, expanding a huge transnational protected area from South Africa to neighbouring Lesotho.

Most importantly, it will open a new and important wildlife migration corridor. Migratory animal populations will be able to recover as they'll no longer be isolated and fragmented.

It took six years for landowners and conservationists to get the new park formally declared, much faster than it usually takes to have land declared protected. It was only possible due to a high degree of consensus among landowners that a commitment to conservation was the best way to manage their land for future generations.

I research how land and ecological systems are governed across boundaries.

I believe the new reserve takes forward a commitment made by South Africa at the 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference of the Parties that it would protect 30% of its land (including mountains) and oceans by 2030.

So far, only 9,2% of South Africa's land is under protection and biodiversity loss is increasing. This is why strategic additions to protected areas are particularly important.