South Africa to Promote Eco-Tourism
11/30/99
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Title: INTERVIEW - South Africa to promote eco-tourism
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 30, 1999
Byline: Ed Stoddard
PRETORIA - South Africa plans to promote itself as an eco-tourism
destination and hopes that poor rural communities at home as well as
neighbouring countries will reap the benefits.
"We have a lot of potential as an eco-tourism destination and we will
develop and market this," Environment and Tourism Minister Valli
Moosa told Reuters in an interview.
The benefits of tourist revenue must be spread to previously
disadvantaged groups, notably poor blacks in the countryside, he
said.
"In the past, we have often had a conflictual relationship between
the needs of people and the needs of conservation," he said. In the
past, many rural blacks were forcibly removed from their homes and
land to make way for game parks.
"We now have a whole movement toward involving communities in
conservation, and poor rural communities are now seeing the economic
value of conservation," Moosa said. "Many now see that conservation
is more profitable than livestock grazing."
Moosa said his ministry was developing plans to enlarge existing
conservation areas and parks, one of the most ambitious being a
scheme to extend the boundaries of the famed Kruger National Park
into neighbouring Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
The Kruger Park borders both countries and its boundary with
Mozambique is 350 kilometres (200 miles) long.
"We are in talks to make a transnational park with Zimbabwe and
Mozambique...we hope it will become one of the biggest tourist
destinations in the world," he said.
He said the plan could see a tripling of the size of the Kruger Park,
currently about as big as Israel, and would benefit all concerned.
He said the Kruger had too many elephants for its size and habitat,
while on the Mozambican side there was a scarcity of game because of
the country's brutal 16-year civil war, which ended in 1992.
But he said that before any fences came down, the three countries had
to work out common conservation management plans. Extensive mine-
clearing operations would also be needed on the war-scarred
Mozambican side.
Surveys show that up to two-thirds of visitors to South Africa come
for the country's abundance of wildlife and stunning natural scenery.
The country is saddled with an unenviable reputation for violent
crime but Moosa insisted it was a safe destination for tourists.
"Surveys consistently show that tourists to South Africa leave with a
very positive view of the country," he said.