SANParks Blog

Camdeboo…what a lovely name. This national park which surrounds the town of Graaff-Reinet is the second smallest in the country (after Bontebok National Park), but I think it has the most evocative name off all the nature reserves in the country. Park manager Peter Burdett tells me that the name “Camdeboo” comes from a Khoi [...]

Do you know which is the third-largest nature reserve in South Africa, after Kruger National Park and Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park? Would you ever guess its Baviaanskloof? I wouldn’t have thought so either, but this 210 000 hectare reserve is under rated and generally misunderstood by the public. Check where it is on Google Maps here. [...]

The Baviaanskloof (“valley of baboons”) is a narrow valley in the Eastern Cape about a hundred kilometres inland from the southern coast of South Africa. To get here, I drove from Plettenberg Bay on the coastline of the Indian Ocean, over Prince Alfred’s pass through the Outeniqua Mountains. It was rainy in Plett, and the [...]

On my way to Baviaanskloof, I stopped over in Knysna to chat to some of the SANParks scientists who work in the Garden Route National Park. After chatting to them, I realise how complex the situation is. The Garden Route National Park encompasses some of the most diverse habitats in the country, stretching 160kms over 148 [...]

I was supposed to spend a few weeks at Kogelberg Nature Reserve in December, but will only get there in July, once the reserve’s new accommodation is ready. I can’t wait, because the Kogelberg is one of the world’s most famous nature reserves. Here’s why: it hosts the greatest diversity of plant species per hectare [...]

At the end of last year, I was fortunate to be taken paragliding over the Wilderness Lakes section of Garden Route National Park. It gave me a great opportunity to see how beautiful this area is. But also, it gives a great perspective on the challenges that organisations like SANParks face. In among the rivers, [...]

Knsyna is famous not only for its indigenous forests, but also its estuary, which is the biggest – and most ecologically important – in the country. According to several scientific studies relating to birds, fish and plants, it ranks higher than all other estuaries in terms of its natural importance. Incredibly, according to research supplied [...]

The Knysna Forests…home to the southern-most elephant population in Africa, and the only free-ranging, unfenced elephants left in the country. Yesterday I went for a walk with Gerrit Slinger, a field ranger in the Goudveld section of the forests. About thirty kilometres behind Knysna in the foothills of the Outeniqua mountains, Goudveld includes both indigenous [...]

The so-called “Wilderness” section of the Garden Route National Park is astoundingly beautiful. It constists of a series of large lakes fed by the Touw River, and these lie between the traditional Knysna forests and a beach more than 30 kilometres long. The four lakes are world renowned birding sites, and two of them – [...]

The Tsitsikamma coastline is one of the more beautiful in the country. High cliffs covered in fynbos, deep gorges bedecked with indigenous forests and dark, clear rivers which flow from the Outeniqua mountains into the sea. The Storms River is one of the most impressive of these waterways. The gorge is several hundred metres deep [...]