New national park on the cards for Garden Route

Katherine Wilkinson GARDEN ROUTE CORRESPONDENT

OFFICIAL proclamation of the massive new Garden Route National Park is expected within a few months.

The new park‘s formation was gazetted last month, and when proclaimed would become one of only four national parks worldwide with residents living within their borders. The others are in Italy, Canada and the United States.

The new conservation area is set to take in the Tsitsikamma and Wilderness national parks, the Knysna lake area, the Southern Cape indigenous forests and mountain catchment areas all along the Garden Route.

SANParks Garden Route regional manager Mvusy Songelwa said the geographical diversity of the various areas within the Garden Route park made for an exceptional and unique conservation model.

“There will be no other national park (nationally) that will include the unique combination of marine, coastal, lake, indigenous forest and mountain catchment areas.”

No additional gates or fences would be erected to mark the park‘s boundaries other than those already in place.

“Our distinctive economic drive will be conservation without boundaries in the landscape, unlike in other parks with fenced boundaries,” Songelwa said.

About 69000ha of land is set to be given national park status when the Garden Route park is proclaimed. This does not include the large tracts which are already proclaimed national parks and which would be incorporated into the Garden Route park.

New development would still be allowed inside the park, but within strict guidelines set out by a environmental management framework being finalised by the department of environmental affairs and tourism.

The public have been given 60 days to comment on the park‘s formation, during which SANParks is set to host public information sessions beginning next month.

Songelwa said it was important that the community took part in the process. “We want to encourage the public to write their comments directly to the department of environmental affairs as per the gazette requirement.”

Proclamation of the park is expected to follow shortly after the comment period and after possible representations have been made to the government.

“We hope that the new national park will be a reality by Easter 2009,” said Songelwa.