SANParks Blog

The last two days have been busy! Yesterday I spent the day in the Woody Cape section of Addo Elephant National Park, and it’s another world. The scenery changes completely. Instead of the sub tropical thicket which characterizes the main section of Addo where most of the wildlife is, Woody Cape comprises dense evergreen coastal [...]

Addo Elephant National Park is most famous for its conservation of the last remaining wild elephants in the Eastern Cape. A few hundred years ago there were thousands of the earth’s largest land mammal in this area of South Africa, as well as plenty of other wildlife like lions, leopards, rhinos, buffaloes and springbok. But [...]

Mountain Zebra National Park really surprised me! This is one of the most beautiful parks I’ve been to so far. Even though it is only 100 kilometres east of Camdeboo National Park, it has a very different feel. (Check out where it is in South Africa by clicking here on Google Maps). I can definitely [...]

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 [...]