Research projects registered within SANParks
Figure 1. Research effort for the most worked-in parks for 2021-22. The total number of active registered projects during this period was 355, five parks combined with multi-park projects accounted for almost 90% of research studies. The remaining 10% was spread amongst the other smaller parks.
During 2021-2022, the COVID-19 pandemic continued to affect travel of external researchers to our parks, especially from abroad. The impact of the COVID-9 pandemic on registered research projects could clearly be seen in the reduced number of new project applications that were submitted for registration. As travel restrictions eased, researchers resumed field work, returning to our parks, and by the final quarter of the review period, a steady increase of new research applications were submitted. Our online research portal, which was launched in 2021, assisted with ensuring a smooth project registration experience and keeping track of registered projects. Improvements to the system, which we are planning for 2022-2023 will include a facility for researchers to upload files and required documents directly onto the portal. The three parks that attracted the most research during 2021 included Kruger (30%), Garden Route (19%) and Table Mountain NP (11%). Encouragingly, many registered projects are conducted across multiple parks (20%) (Fig. 1).
The majority of registered projects are conducted by South African researchers (291 of 355), whilst the remainder are researchers from 17 different countries (Fig. 2). SANParks staff were primary researchers on 37 and co-workers on 111 of 355 projects. This illustrates the importance of leveraging external expertise to complement the relatively small group of scientists employed within the organisation.
Figure 2. Research effort per country; South African researchers make up just over 80% of all researchers, the USA and UK account for another 10% of researchers, with the other countries on the list making up the remaining 10%.
Of the current 355 projects running across parks, 80% were rated as essential or important to SANParks key issues, aligning with the 11 research themes identified in the SANParks research strategy. The dominant themes this year were Ecosystem structure, function and process, followed by Global Environment Change, and Technology development.
This article was originally published in the 2021/2022 Research Report.
