South Africa’s Drakensberg mountains have a new 6,500 hectare nature reserve. The new Northern Drakensberg Nature Reserve is working with communities and will preserve ancient rock art, vital grasslands and water sources for millions of people. It connects a neighbouring world heritage site to another nature reserve, expanding a huge transnational protected area from South Africa to neighbouring Lesotho.
Most importantly, it will open a new and important wildlife migration corridor. Migratory animal populations will be able to recover as they’ll no longer be isolated and fragmented.
It took six years for landowners and conservationists to get the new park formally declared, much faster than it usually takes to have land declared protected. It was only possible due to a high degree of consensus among landowners that a commitment to conservation was the best way to manage their land for future generations.
