Africa Wild

As a result of our calling for Dr Mabunda's resignation, we need to come up with an alternative to the way that our parks are being managed at the moment....no finger pointing, just good positive discussions. Think outside the box, no matter how wild the idea may sound in the beginning, many minds could fine tune it into a workable alternative.

For a while now, there has been talk on privatizing the camps in our national parks. Surely this is just one very small aspect of what goes on in the parks and I for one don't see it as an answer to the bigger problems that our parks face today. However lets discuss this issue as a stepping stone to bigger things.

There is no doubt that camps ( and I'm referring primarily to Kruger) are not in the best state of repair. This could be because of a number of reasons like high maintenance requirements due to age etc shortage of funds and manpower amongst many others. So one solution would be to privatize the camps and let someone or some company with the expertise look after them from here on in. In a nutshell I would presume it would work like this........SanParks calls for tenders and the applicant is well scrutinized. The applicant pays SP a yearly fee with maybe an upfront lump sum and the camp then becomes the new 'owners' problem for them to run and manage in a way that they can turn that camp into a profitable business. This is probably not the only scenario, so lets hear them and then we can start discussing the pro's and cons on each scenario.

I like this way of thinking,...but, take a look at the camp restaurants!

SANParks are still ultimately in control, or rather should be!

I think SANParks would still be in control of wildlife aspects? They have set a bit of a precedent regarding new hotels and concessions, tourism-wise?

Wow, do you guys suffer from ADD, in 2 posts we've jumped from privatization of camps to restaurants, hotels, concessions and then conservation.

Lets talk camps here, we can move onto other things later and boy there is a lot of them.

Sprocs, I would assume that whoever took over the camp would have to be in the hospitality industry and therefore I would assume the camp restaurant would fall into the same deal

What has privatization of camps to do with poaching?

Personally I believe that privatization would add significantly to the cost for an average visitor, would the tender awards be fair and based on “best value for money for the current client base” or would they be awarded based on who can offer the best “kick back” and imagine trying to book a trip to KNP with multiple different camp “operators” or is this based on 1 “group” taking over all camps?

Toko wrote:What has privatization of camps to do with poaching?

Who mentioned poaching Toko?

BC, one group will presumably take over all camps!?

Nothing to do with poaching, I think? Although new management and service vehicles, not necessarily new lower-level staff!

Sprocky, the poaching crisis is why the petition calls for Mabunda's replacement -O

.... perhaps SANParks management would concentrate on conservation issues and anti-poaching more if they were not responsible for the tuourism and hospitality issues