Nature Conservation in SA: State of Provincial Reserves; Leopard snaring in the provincial and national parks

Meeting report

Nature Conservation in SA: Current and Desired States / State of SA Provincial Reserves

Dr Hector Magome, Director: Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA), said that the challenge with conservation lies with people and not the resources. There was too much focus on dead rhinos and poaching, whereas the most important thing was the basic resources upon which the wildlife depended, like soils and the landscape.

The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and WESSA published a report in 2023, which was available online, that identified three key challenges to nature conservation in game reserves. The first was the budget, where 80% of it was spent on salaries by most of provinces, except the parks managed by SANParks. Only 20% of the budget went to the management of the parks. This was not a new issue and had been prevalent in reserves since 1994, and was worsening. The reason SANParks was the exception was that they generated between 70-85% of their own money to manage their parks. There was also a lack of skills or qualified people to manage the resources and poor management of the resources.

Dr Magome stated that the bottom line was that there was a need to have partnerships and to find additional funding options. The country could also let go of protected areas that made little to no contribution to biodiversity conservation, because some of the protected areas had been set aside at a time when little was known about biodiversity. South Africa ranked among the five or ten mega-diverse countries and that was what was important to protect -- the biodiversity. There needed to be interventions while drawing from lessons from other nations, which included community-based natural resources and adopting an African parks model in which non-profit companies (NPCs) or non-governmental organisations (NGOs) took over to help manage parks.

In conclusion, he said that the state could not provide sustainable funding for game reserves, as it was already failing to fund key social and economic functions, which was a reality across many African states.

See attached for full presentation

Discussion

Mr M Paulsen (EFF) said that many of the protected areas presented nothing unique about the area, especially those in the Western Cape. Some places were categorised as protected areas, but this was done to keep people from accessing land. Such areas just contained wild grass and nothing special. He was unaware of provinces other than the Western Cape, where there was a high number of protected areas that denied indigenous people access to land. He therefore wanted to know what people could do to reverse the protected area status to access land, because they were being abused to further oppress and keep people landless.

Mr D Bryant (DA) agreed that biodiversity was an important part of the nation’s tourism offering – it is what made the South African environment so unique, so it was important that the biodiversity be protected. In his opinion, the Western Cape was setting an extremely good example in protecting its biodiversity as one of the most bio-diverse regions in the world. He asked what set Cape Nature apart from some of the provincial facilities, like the North West Parks and Tourism Board. What had Cape Nature managed to do differently in the face of the challenges identified? How could the reserves be made to be financially sustainable, not just about providing a budget but rather ensuring that the reserves were able to sustain themselves through viable tourism offerings? He asked Dr Magome what suggestions he had picked up during his investigations and experience as to what made provincial reserves work from a financial sustainability perspective.

Ms A Weber (DA) referred to the 80% of the budget that went to salaries and staff, which left 20% for the resources necessary to run a park, which was very little money. She therefore did not understand the need for private investment and NGOs. She was also concerned with the presenter’s comments that the people appointed actually knew very little about conservation, but seemed reluctant to suggest to the state who it should fill the positions with. Surely, the board could request that they specify the qualifications needed in conservation when they advertised. She asked whether the provinces had training programmes for new employees or internships. She expressed concern that there was a total imbalance in the budget, with the bulk of it going to the people instead of the actual work for which they were appointed. She said they needed to look at a plan to sort that issue out, instead of just speaking about it.

She asked why tourism income was so low in every provincial park that it had led Dr Magome to foresee that such parks would exist only on paper. What could be done, or what suggestions did he have, to promote tourism. In her opinion, poor management was not an excuse, and they needed to start looking at consequence management. She asked to be provided with a list of every single provincial park that existed and what state they were in.

Ms H Winkler (DA) asked what they meant when referring to conservation goals. What exactly did they want to achieve, and what were the shortcomings in achieving those conservation goals in provincial parks? She understood that unsustainable financial models were being used, with 80% spent on salaries, but asked where they should ideally have the funds focused on to achieve the desired outcomes. What was the main impediment that stood in the way of public private partnerships (PPPs), such as they had seen in other successful parks? Had that model been attempted previously in provincial parks? What stood in the way, and how could one assist in getting those partnerships underway?

Mr N Singh (IFP) said that every Member of the Committee aligned themselves with ensuring that the nation’s flora and fauna were protected in such a way that they could also make sustainable use of it, and that communities could benefit from the flora and fauna that they preserved. In terms of best practice, he asked what made those models in Madikwe and Pilanesberg successful. Based on Dr Magome’s experience, to what level could the financial and human resources assist government and the provincial parks in meeting the common objectives? He said that community equity was lacking in many of the parks. He asked how the communities surrounding these parks benefited, and to what extent Dr Magome thought sustainable partnerships with the communities in terms of equity were being practised. In his opinion, if they could get sustainable partnerships and ownerships, then the rhino poaching and other challenges would start decreasing.

Responses

Dr Magome responded to Mr Paulsen that when parks were set aside in South Africa, the idea of biodiversity and conservation, which were key critical areas, had not been as advanced as they were at the moment. That was why SANParks had done a sterling job by increasing the size of their protected areas by close to a million hectares between 1994 and 2024. Some of the parks that they had were not important and critical. SANParks had recently given up a park so communities could access the land for mining. It also scored a lot by expanding a park like Mokala, which played a critical role. He was not qualified to say which area in the Western Cape was unimportant. All he could say was that the conservation efforts in South Africa were pathetic, with only 6%-7% of land being set aside to be used for nature conservation. Unfortunately, it would not make sense for the state to give up anything because of this. Much of the land which was conserved in South Africa, which was close to 20% of the country, was in private hands, and those people played an important role.

He said that what set Cape Nature apart from the other parks was that the old technical staff were still there. Such staff were highly qualified, and knew the landscape, and when one loses such qualified staff, the situation deteriorates. They had not observed a high departure of technically capable staff at SANParks and the Western Cape, and that was what set Cape Nature apart. The second reason was that nature conservation was internalised. The idea of taking children to a park once a year did not help. If the future generations were going to be part of conservation, they had to be exposed continually, all the time. He concurred that training programmes were extremely important if they were to retain a pool of qualified people. He had long retired from conservation, and the only reason why he was still in formal conservation was because it was internalised. Of all the provinces, the Western Cape contributed by far the largest portion to the country’s mega-diverse status.

He said the parks could be made sustainable by investing money from the state. The parks were the nation’s investment, and the state needed to continue to make those investments because some of the parks would not be able to make money on their own. However, he agreed that they could not run away from the fact they needed to have sustainable tourism and support from the private sector. Madikwe game reserve was kept going by the fact that private concessionaires were putting in money, not through the concession fees, but from their own revenue. They were collecting an annual budget of about R10-12 million to keep Madikwe going, so there would have to be some South Africans who would have cared enough to invest.

In response to Ms Weber, Dr Magome said there was little he could do in terms of training if people could not go into parks and do the normal work they were supposed to do, because they had little money to do that. They could continue to appeal to the state to increase budgets, but that would not happen. That was why he suggested they invite the private sector, NGOs and South Africans of goodwill, to come in and help.

He said conservation goals had been an important question because the main reason such organisations existed was to conserve or protect biodiversity. The other goal was to make sure that the use of biodiversity resources was sustainable, so that when they used these resources, they should at least continue to exist forever. This was why they could not continue to undermine technically trained people who would help to maintain a semblance of what they meant by sustainability. The third goal was to take advantage of where there was a possibility of sharing benefits, which the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) argues should be equitable.

In response to Mr Singh, he said that when they were working on how to make SANParks sustainable. They had got McKinsey and Company to help them, and they had identified that one of the things keeping SANParks going was the fact that parks like the Kruger National Park (KNP) were contributing about 70% of the income. However, in the whole portfolio of about 20 SANParks parks, only five or six were "milk cows." One of the things that helped them in terms of best practice was to manage the money generators well, so that one got income out of them to take care of the other parks that were not doing well -- to basically manage the whole thing as if it was one portfolio.

He said that the white population had internalised visiting the parks every year -- SANParks' parks were booked a year in advance. That was not something that black South Africans did. They were advised that they should make sure that they managed the parks very well so that their patrons would keep coming. Many of the concessions SANParks had were learned from North West Parks. SANParks had actually surpassed the performance of North West, and collected far more revenue from their concessions.

Regarding best practice, Dr Magome said they must continue refining the model of bringing in income. SANParks had been able to crack the code, and the reason why the Western Cape worked to a great extent was because the City of Cape Town was contributing yearly towards the management of Table Mountain, because they realised that Table Mountain alone contributed substantially to the economy of Western Cape. Only when the nation realised that these parks could contribute greatly to the economy would they realise that investment.

He said there were no good examples of community equity in South Africa. He had already explained that the reason why they did not have good examples of community participation was because of their history involving the landscape and space. There were communities and parks very far from one another, unlike in other areas such as Namibia and Botswana, where people were in close proximity to each other. It was a difficult thing to make such models work.

Dr Howard Hendricks, Management Executive, Kruger National Park, added that a very good observation as to what set Cape Nature apart, and many of the other successful conservation areas, was the fact that there were particular functions within these entities that, in their view, provided strategic leadership. This was not just through scientific information, but also technical guidance and policy inputs. In his view, there were probably three key areas which made them successful. One was that they had been able to balance their conservation needs with their tourism needs. The same could be noted in Cape Nature, which may not be to the extent or have the same impact as SANParks, but they share commonality in terms of the principles they apply. Secondly, to manage the company effectively and efficiently, in both cases, there was a tool called the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT), which essentially managed the effectiveness of those protected areas. Because of that system, entities were able to measure how effective their conservation efforts were. The third area was to grow sensibly, but also to nurture the science function that informed the decision making. He was aware that entities such as SANParks were always on the lookout for emerging conservation issues that may become a threat if not attended to. These were the things that set certain entities apart in terms of success or whether they were struggling.

He said it was noticeable that the information provided by Dr Magome about the challenges was all related to sound corporate governance, whereas the conservation management challenges were at the bottom. In reality, this was the complete opposite of what the World Forum on risk conservation referred to. This was because if conservation entities ignored issues such as climate change or polluted rivers, this would undermine conservation efforts. What the provincial nature reserves were facing currently were immediate challenges, and while those challenges were important from a corporate governance point of view, it was equally important that they be looking at urgent conservation issues, which, if not dealt with, may become bigger issues in the future. There were many tools that conservation entities could use by developing a conservation development framework that really tried to balance conservation with tourism. There were well-tested methods and methodologies that main conservation entities could benefit from to achieve greater success.

Cape Leopard Trust

Dr Helen Turnbull, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Cape Leopard Trust, congratulated Dr Magome and Dr Ian Little, Head of Conservation at the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), for preparing the presentation that touched on things that NGOs could do to raise awareness to threats to biodiversity.

The Cape Leopard Trust was a small NGO in the Western Cape. Their focus was on research, conservation and education, and they believed that a holistic approach brings people into conservation and connects their research very proactively with the people and communities.

The Chairperson interjected to allow Mr Bryant to speak.

Mr Bryant apologised for the interruption, and asked whether Dr Little would be presenting as well, or was just observing.

The Chairperson responded that Dr Little's views had been represented during the presentation by Dr Magome.

Dr Little said that Mr Magome had represented his views well. He encouraged the Committee to read the report and follow up further.

The Chairperson apologised to Ms Turnbull, and invited the Cape Trust to continue their presentation.

Dr Katy Williams, Director: Research and Conservation, Cape Leopard Trust, said that tourism contributed to the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), which in 2022 had been US$168 billion, and was more in 2023. However, there was a growing threat to the nation’s wildlife and tourism industry, and this was illegal snaring. This was a common hunting method, where a noose was created from a strong material affixed to an anchor point and placed on a game trail or fence line. Snares were extremely easy to set up, and one person could set a multitude of snares in a very short time, but they were difficult to spot by an untrained eye. Animals caught in these snares usually die a slow and painful death from injury, starvation or dehydration. The people who set up snares would return only after extended periods, and sometimes did not return at all, leaving large numbers of animals to waste away from snares. Stronger animals like leopards were sometimes able to pull away from the anchor point, but they could lose limbs and the snare could also remain embedded in their bodies after they escaped which led to infection.

Dr Williams said that snaring was indiscriminate, cruel, and an unsustainable use of the country's natural resources. Hunting wild animals using snares was prohibited under the Nature Conservation Ordinance of 1974, yet it was still happening. It was hard to gather evidence to convict snarers, and the consequences were too mild to act as a deterrent. Snaring needed to be addressed and resources needed to be invested into supporting provincial nature conservation authorities, law enforcement and equipping judicial officials.

She said that from their studies, some of the reasons snares were set were often associated with socio-economic factors such as poverty, a low level of education, unemployment and food insecurity. According to their research, the biggest driver of snaring in the Western Cape was as a protein supplement, where bush meat was preferred over domestic meats. Another was hunting for sport or with dogs, which was becoming more commonplace. There was a global wildlife extinction crisis, with Uganda and Zimbabwe having experienced an uptick in snaring activities.

She said that statistics had confirmed that 14 000 snares were removed from the Kruger National Park between 2020 and 2022. In 2023, 415 animals had been killed by snares in the park. The Endangered Wildlife Trust had recorded 17 wild dogs’ events. 55 snares had been removed from the dogs, and 14 wild dogs were killed in snares. Considering that there were only 280 wild dogs in the park, that meant that one in every four wild dogs had been caught in snares in the past three years. Outside of protected areas, 671 snares had been found on agricultural property during snare patrols between 2019 and 2020. Occurrences of snares had increased since COVID, and there was still much unknown about the practice's full impact on nature.

Dr Williams said that from their research, the snares in the Boland area of the Western Cape were set primarily for small antelope and porcupines, which were the main source of sustenance for leopards. The loss of small antelopes and porcupines would therefore affect the prey availability for the leopards, and, ultimately, their survival.

In response to the snare uptick, there was a need for a collaborative response. This was why the Trust had created an initiative called Snare Free, which was a joint initiative with five different organisations. The initiative had been launched last August, and had provided a coordinated response for snared wildlife in the Western Cape. It also helped provide improved training, data collection and awareness to combat the prevalence of snares across the province. She explained that one of the core components of Snare Free was the response plan, which was a coordinated system to help animals caught in snares. The various organisations have used their expertise to develop a protocol that aligned with the organisation's policies for the legal stipulations and by-laws to ensure that animal welfare and human safety were prioritised. This initiative was part of the goal to make everyone become more aware of snaring and encourage people to become more active in biodiversity conservation, which was an often overlooked problem.

She said a multifaceted and holistic approach, including research conservation and education, was needed to tackle the issues properly. Research on snaring was lacking, and it was vital to be able to detect the problem and predict snaring hotspots within the landscape. The data collected could also be used to develop the best way to combat the problem in different areas, because there was no one-size-fits-all conservation solution.

Conservation initiatives were also needed to address snaring. In the short term, snare removal, responding to live animals, policing and patrolling may be helpful. These must be done immediately. The long term solution addressed the drivers of snaring and supported other needy areas.

She said it was possible to change the trend if action was taken immediately. In the last year, the endangered Indo-Chinese leopard had been deemed functionally extinct due to rampant snaring in South East Asia. The country needed to consider whether they were willing to risk the valuable tourism revenue and the livelihoods that tourism supports, or if it would stand up and combat snaring.

Cape Leopard Trust was asking for a collaborative effort to deal with the issue before it was too late. They were seeking the support of the Committee to build a multi-layered solution that was going to help to address a complex problem. A national strategy, led by a national forum, was a first step as the problem was too large to deal with independently, and they needed to draw on the national sense of pride in conserving nature to ensure there was wildlife to protect.

Dr Williams concluded that the Trust and its partners planned to host a national snare mitigation symposium and were seeking government support to achieve this. Sharing information should not just be among conservation organisations -- there was a need to boost awareness across the whole of society so that snaring was no longer an issue to be ignored.

See attached for full presentation

Discussion

Ms Winkler thanked the Cape Leopard Trust for the presentation, and said she had had an opportunity to engage with the NGO prior to their presentation in the meeting. The Trust was doing incredible work on educating people on the huge threat that snaring posed to the nation’s biodiversity conservation. She was aware that Kruger National Park had seen a 400% increase in snares in the last couple of years. This was something that had not been mentioned in the departmental report. She thanked Cape Leopard Trust for bringing the issue of snaring to the Committee’s attention, and hoped it could find a way to assist the Trust going forward.

Mr Bryant commended the Trust for doing fantastic work. It was quite evident that they were filling a gap that was quite gaping at present. He asked whether they were working with the authorities to effect prosecutions of those involved in snaring. While he was aware that it was a delicate issue because the people involved in snaring were usually people from underprivileged backgrounds requiring sustenance, it was still an illegal activity. He asked whether they were getting the requisite support from the authorities, and what some of the challenges they faced in achieving it. Was there any specific piece of legislation that they would like to have amended? Did they feel a need to put in place or promulgate legislation on snaring either by the National Assembly or potentially the provinces, or perhaps at a local level?

Mr Singh asked what specific thing they were looking at for assistance. What could be done to mitigate the communities’ needs to help curb their appetite for bush meat? What specific interventions were they proposing to deal with the issue?

Ms Winkler asked what the response from SANParks to the snaring issue had been and what they were planning to do about it.

The Chairperson asked whether there were any other areas of common convergence between the Trust and SANParks. Had the Trust had engagements with SANParks, and how had far those engagements gone, because SANParks was an entity under the Committee’s purview?

Cape Leopard Trust's response

Dr Williams replied that they were working quite closely with a number of authorities, particularly with Cape Nature, which had been helping them a lot to understand the legal framework, as well as helping them to try and secure prosecutions in places where possible. They were working with the Wildlife Forensic Academy, learning from them about how they could collect evidence better. They were also doing training courses to try and make sure that landowners and conservation officials understood how to gain evidence when they were in the field, as well as the importance of preserving the footprints and the DNA. She said there were significant challenges with prosecutions, as it was very hard to prove that someone was setting up a snare. They were trying to deal with the issue, and part of the snare mitigation symposium they would like to host would be having that specific theme of diving into the legal challenges and prosecution areas by building the legal knowledge and building everybody’s knowledge on how they could move forward. Knowledge was lacking, and they could learn a lot from the other provinces and the other areas, especially those areas that were dealing with more endangered species, as there may be more information on prosecution and legislation.

She said that with the research done on their part, there was legislation in place, but it was not being implemented appropriately. There was also a need to educate the judicial officers so that they could understand how harmful the practice was and help them make informed decisions.

Dr Turnbull added that the Wildlife Academy had a mock-up courtroom. Having worked in conservation for over 20 years, she knew it was very hard to collect evidence. Despite the research being done by Dr Little and EWT, where they were looking at detecting snares with sniffer dogs, that was still in its early stages. Despite snaring being a big problem, how it was going to be policed was only in its infancy, and they needed a lot of people to add value to help in coming to a decision as to how it could be policed, and that would lead to issues regarding legislation.

She said that they would need a lot of input from SANParks and Cape Nature about how they could effectively influence and add legislation if needed, but there were a lot of complex issues affecting snares, which was a major problem. In terms of where they needed help, she said that there were quite a number of things that could be done. They could potentially be considering an approach by SANParks and Cape Nature for training up teams, similar to the lady "Black Mambas" up in the KNP, but specifically providing for snare detection. However, this would put a big financial load on the government bodies. As the Cape Leopard Trust, they tried to help raise funds to support a lot of their work as much as they could, but if they could work together they might have a better chance at pulling off a success.

Dr Williams said that if they were able to establish a national task team to build a national forum, this would really be one of the ways they could start to work with organisations like SANParks to achieve this.

In response to Mr Singh, Dr Williams said that the issues of underprivileged people trying to survive were exactly what made snaring such a difficult issue to address, and that was why they were advocating for a short term and a long term approach in terms of the conservation strategy. One thing they had been doing was trying to understand the communities a bit better, and in the last year, they hosted over 100 confidential interviews conducted within the four different communities within the Western Cape. They had spoken to people setting up snares to try to understand what drove them to snaring activity. They had talked to them about their issues and potentially alternative livelihood solutions that could be adopted, to replace snaring from their daily activity. If they were able to target the snaring hotspots, they could start to devise systems with the communities aimed at building alternative income structures that they could consider. However, they had to ensure that what they were doing among these communities was done sensitively and based on proper information.

She said that SANParks was one of the organisations they sought to work with. As they have started to build a national mitigation symposium, they would very much like to invite them to speak at the symposium, and they have already been engaging with SANParks in the Western Cape in this regard. They had not had the opportunity to approach SANParks nationally, but they would also like to learn from them.

SANParks's response

Ms Hapiloe Sello, CEO of SANParks, said snaring was one issue that SANParks had highlighted to the Committee, being one of the emerging challenges evolving around the KNP, and they were scrambling to first understand the reasons for this before they could think of the interventions. She indicated that they were happy to work with the Trust going forward. They were keen to engage at a national level, and said that SANParks would be reaching out to the Cape Leopard Trust the next morning.

Mr Oscar Mthimkhulu, Managing Executive, Kruger National Park, said that the KNP situation had really made an effort to put resources towards trying to detect where snares were being set. They had also improved in terms of reporting, so they were aware of what stage they were in terms of snaring. The main issue for them was understanding the main drivers behind the high level of snaring. They had engaged communities from the north as early as last year. They had just finished their community engagement the previous week with the communities in the south. They had picked up what Dr Williams had indicated in terms of subsistence, but the issue was how the resources were collected and used, as some of it was not intentional. There were drivers from a socio-economic point of view that were fundamental in terms of the motivation behind that the kind of behaviour. From their engagement, they had learnt that some of the people involved were youths as young as 10 to 16 years. They also suspected that there was a syndicate behind the widespread snaring, and that was what they were trying to deal with. He agreed that snaring was an issue that they could not resolve alone, and they were working with NGOs such as the Endangered Wildlife Trust. From a greater perspective, this was something they were already engaging at the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA), because they realised that snaring did not end at the KNP, but extended to other reserves and hit across provinces.

He agreed that there was a need to look at the drivers behind such activity, but said that when dealing with people relying on such resources, they also needed to look at alternatives and try to mobilise them so they could move away from snaring. It was something that required a collective effort and more cooperative arrangements, but there were also issues from a socio-economic point of view that they had to deal with and come up with alternatives. He emphasised that it would require a collective effort to try and press forward.

Further discussion

Ms Winkler asked if they knew the extent of snaring in the Kruger National Park, and if they had any idea on how prevalent snaring was in other parks in South Africa, and the extent to which this was a significant problem that needed to be addressed. She asked how they could get communities to see conservation and parks as needing protection and reverence. This was hard when communities did not feel like they benefited from national parks.

Dr Williams replied that as far as she was aware, many of the nature conservation authorities across the country had recorded issues of leopards being caught in traps. She could provide an overview of the data only on large free-roaming leopards, and how they were getting caught in other provinces. SANParks could provide better data on other animals.

Dr Turnbull said it was important to get children involved by promoting environmental education. Looking at livelihood development, and enabling the communities to be part of the law enforcement method, would help wildlife conservation. They also needed to bring children closer to wildlife and nature so that they could get to love it, as only they were going to protect it.

The Chairperson asked how they were going to facilitate the meeting between SANParks and the Cape Leopard Trust, or if that would be left to the Committee's secretariat.

Ms Sello confirmed that SANParks would be in touch within the next day or two.

The Chairperson said that there was consensus that they needed to protect the country's biodiversity, and that they should use every other resource at their disposal to preserve what was left of it.

The meeting was adjourned.