Elephants, lions and rhino do not carry passports. Nor do they have the wherewithal to open locked gates or climb over fences.
The trouble is that in the history of southern Africa boundaries between nations and boundaries between private and public lands have been marked out and fenced, not according to patterns of animal migration, but according to the need, greed and wants of humans.
This is changing – to the benefit of the animals and the humans. And the change is coming despite political instability and poverty in many of the nations affected.
The idea of transfrontier conservation areas – or peace parks – began 10 years ago, but it was not until South Africa became democratic and the civil war ended in Mozambique that the idea could come to fruition. South Africa’s Kruger National Park (in the country’s north-east) has joined Gaza in Mozambique and Gonarhezou in Zimbabwe to form a 35,000 sq km park – at least on paper. But there is a huge amount of work to be done – particularly restocking and de-mining in Mozambique after the ravages of civil war and poaching. But as the situation in Mozambique improves, the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorates.
The theory is that people, like the animals will be able to cross international borders within the park without formality, returning to the nation of entry when they leave the park.
In South Africa, a million people a year go to Kruger National Park. Mozambique hopes to get some spin off as the transfrontier conservation area gets better roads and resorts.
The long-term dream is to remove the barriers between a number of other private parks and public parks, such as Hluhluwe-Umfolozi and St Lucia World heritage area, in mid-south-east South Africa, to form a chain of parks and corridors through which game can travel safely and freely.
Hluhluwe-Umfolozi has one of the most successful rhino breeding programs in the world and perhaps the best place and easiest place to see both black and white rhino as it has the highest number of rhino than any park in the world. It has brought the white rhino back from the verge of extinction and has delivered rhinos to other parks that have been ravaged by poaching. There are still only 16,000 rhino in the world – 13,000 in Africa, 6000 of them bred at Hluhluwe-Umfolozi.
Abutting Kruger National Park is Sabi Sabi private game reserve. It has three lodges that defy reality. The bathroom with full glass looks out to the wild bush with no fence or barrier. You can be showering in a luxury bathroom looking over a private spa-pool to antelopes and buffalo.
Not only are there no fences around the lodges, but there are no reserve boundary fences. The private reserves are seeing no benefit in holding “”their” game captive within their borders. They get more game by allowing migration and the gene pool for the animals is improved. Sabi Sabi has the full range of game – it would be pretty difficult NOT to see examples of the major African species in a couple of days going out with guides in open-top four-wheel drives.
In public parks, you can self-drive, but there are disadvantages: in a sedan you are lower down so you see less and you are unguided without the advantage of radio contact with other vehicles whose drivers have spotted game.
We witnessed a stark example of another drawback. We saw a couple in a Toyota Corolla with a puncture. The woman was crying hysterically while the man wondered whether to take his chances with the lions by changing the tyre.
With fences coming down and poaching under control South Africa now has to cull elephants because they can be hugely destructive of vegetation – knocking down trees to get at the succulent, new leaves at the top. But as the peace parks progress, the aim is to reduce or eliminate culling. As Marc Reading a guide with Thompson’s Tours says, it is stupid to have South Africa culling elephants when Mozambique has a shortage.
But the only way to get the peace parks to work, particularly Gaza-Kruger-Gonarhezou which has a large human population, is to show local people the economic benefits and jobs that come from tourism.
You recognise that when you watch a white rhino crossing the road in front of you and you think that this wonderful beast would be extinct unless people paid to come to see it.