Ezemvelo KZN Biodiversity Stewardship Programme

[Toko]

New business and old land

July 8 2013 at 09:00am
By BANDILE MKHIZE


Let me for a moment take your minds off the poaching of our embattled rhinos. Let me point you towards something particularly positive – a peak into my “African Conservation” philosophy.

This month I write to you from the Nambiti Game Reserve outside Ladysmith.

It was a wonderful, happy visit, full of smiles from the resident community.

They are successful land claimants of this reserve and willing partners and even shareholders in the business. Jobs are being created and new business ventures are on the horizon. But first let me put you in the picture.

Nambiti is one – and only one – of a great number of exciting and promising projects that cropped up while I was exploring one of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife’s most successful and ambitious programmes, “Stewardship” – or to give its official title “Biodiversity Stewardship Programme”.

Stewardship is a dynamic initiative that holds the key to the realisation of 21st century conservation. In its crudest form it’s a programme that illustrates how we partner with other conservation NGOs and together provide all the expertise needed to help landowners and local communities turn valued land into business enterprises.

What Stewardship seeks to do is identify land anywhere in KwaZulu-Natal, be it community, private or state land, which contains critical natural resources and/or holds the possibility of being used for other purposes. It asks landowners to partner us in looking at their land with new eyes.

There are so many advantages to it. For landowners most of the categories in which they can have their land proclaimed under Stewardship offer both legal backing as well as certain financial incentives, too; tax rebates and the like.

For us as a state conservation body we certainly don’t have the money buy up new land for protected areas or game reserves.

No, but we can – and must – expand our conservation footprint. We can do this through Stewardship. We are just asking people to recognise that parts of their land can be used differently.

As I flicked through this Stewardship report I was amazed at the potential that exists and how many projects we are working on.

Think about it. Look at the huge tracts of land (especially communal) that are being used for subsistence and cattle grazing purposes.

Often degraded but if scrutinised, perhaps some of this land might be used for wildlife, with a tourism and hunting revenue accruing from it, for example.

Only the other week we publicised a case where a black couple had bought a farm near Greytown (“Nomalanga”) and have now given over three-quarters of the estate to nature conservation and tourism whilst pursuing commercial farming operations on the rest.

We have the “Umgano” conservation project in the southern area of KZN, one that perhaps holds the greatest potential.

The resident Mabandla community have engaged with us (and other NGOs) over many years to create a pioneering community business that combines the proclamation of a nature reserve (with its eco-tourism benefits) alongside the establishment of crop, livestock, poultry and vegetable enterprises.

The community already operates a thriving timber operation.

And what of the Mpembeni community conservation area, just outside the western border of our Hluhluwe Game Reserve. Here the community have established a community game reserve and they want to fuse this with our Hluhluwe reserve.

And it’s going to happen. We have both signed the necessary leases and now they are finalising the construction of a lodge with private investors to realise their tourism wishes.

On this grass runway I listened to the “Nambiti” business model. I met seven members of the Senzokuhle community, representatives of about 136 families, and all successful land claimants of this game reserve when this land restitution was granted back in 2007.

Since then they have formed a community trust and become 30 percent shareholders in the operation.

The chairperson of the community trust spoke of its success by using words like “complete trust”, “full co-operation”, “transparency” – all terms that spoke of their full integration into this business.

Each of the 136 families receives about R4 000 every five months, while 180 of them are employed by the reserve.

Plans are well advanced for the construction of a community lodge to add to the existing 10 lodges on the reserve. An abattoir and butchery is also on the cards.

There are many other examples, too many for me to tell you. But Stewardship is the way forward. Of that I couldn’t be more certain.

* Dr Bandile Mkhize is the chief executive of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife

[Richprins]

The proof is often in the pudding in these cases, and they deserve a fair chance! But a far more positive and realistic approach, when compared to the hysterical and convoluted tactics of SANParks, for example!