Gregoire Blond

The 7 december 2005, South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe opened the first access of the new Limpopo Transfrontier Park.

It is the merger of the Kruger National Park, the Gonarezhou (Zimbabwe) and a huge wildlife area in Mozambique.

Tourists and animals will be able to cross the borders. Some fences between Mozambique and South Africa have already been removed.

It's great news for wildlife, because the natural migrations in case of drought will be possible. A natural regulation of some areas will be possible, the concentration of elephants is too high in Kruger and too low in Mozambique for example.

It's also a big opportunity for Mozambique and Zimbabwe to increase their numbers of tourists. They will benefit from the fame and experience of the Kruger. Since 1926, Kruger accomodates tourists, and in 2005 more than one million people came to this garden of Eden.

It's not the first transfrontier park in South Africa. Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park was opened in 2000 between South Africa and Bostwana next to the Kalahari desert. The coordiantion of the two countries is excellent.

The Limpopo Transfrontier PArk management will be harder. The superficies of the Park will be more than 100000km². It will be the biggest wildlife area in Africa. it will be a hard job to create and to apply the same wildlife and tourists management in the whole area. For example, in Kruger tourists can drive by themselves on road, but in Mozambique the Game Drives must be secured by a ranger.

The biggest problem will be Mr Mugabe and the Zimbabwean government. The wildlife budget is ridiculous, without counting the corruption of the civil servants! the parks ( like Hwange or Mana Pools) are in their death throes. Tourists don't come any more for security reasons, so the park managers don't have money to maintain their parks.

So maybe Mr Mugabe is understanding the benefit for his contry of the wildlife tourism, we have to hope so...

The Kenyan government decided to Amboseli from a national park to a national reserve and place it under control of a local authority, the Ol Kejuado County Council. The park is currently managed by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).

Today Amboseli is threatened at the same time by the dryness and an excessive frequentation. The conservationists fear than the new administration will be worst for the widlife and human livelihoods. 

You can have more information about his information on the Africa Geographic of December 2005 or on the AFrican Wildlife Foundation website (http://www.awf.org/news/30783)

Source from Africa Geographic (December 2005). http://www.africa-geographic.com/

The governement has declared two new national parks to preserve some of the last remaining intact forested areas of the Congo Bassin.

This two new parks cover more than 600000 hectares wich contain forest elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, forest antelopes, and a lot of birds species.

We can congratulate Cameroon to preserve two undangered forest areas.