When Thembanani Nsibande first drove up Naude’s Nek in the Eastern Cape Drakensberg, he was in awe. “I was shocked to see how beautiful and incredible the landscape is,” he recalls.
Originally from KwaZulu-Natal, Nsibande, the Drakensberg/Eastern Cape landscape manager with WWF South Africa, wondered why more had not been done to protect the area and develop its conservation and tourism potential.
More than seven years later, the declaration of the first 10 226 hectares of the Grasslands National Park marks a milestone in a project that has changed how conservation is approached in the region — and how Nsibande sees his own work.
Last week, the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, David Maynier, declared 18 properties covering 10 226 hectares between Nqanqarhu and Rhodes as the Grasslands National Park.
Only about 4.6% of South Africa’s grassland biome is protected, according to Statistics SA. The declaration places the 18 properties under SANParks’ management, protecting part of the Eastern Cape Drakensberg Strategic Water Source Area as well as grassland ecosystems that remain under-represented in the country’s protected-area network.
The park was primarily established through biodiversity stewardship, under which participating landowners retain ownership of their properties while committing to agreed conservation and management arrangements. Conservation-compatible farming can continue alongside ecological protection.
“This is the first national park established primarily through a biodiversity stewardship model,” Maynier says. “This initiative is an example of how inclusive partnerships can drive large-scale conservation success.”
For Nsibande, the park is personal: “I’ve invested my soul and everything into the project, so seeing it at this stage really is a dream come true.”
When he joined WWF-SA in April 2019 as the project coordinator, the ambition was to establish a 30 000-hectare grasslands national park. The declaration is the first phase, with further properties in the pipeline.
“We will keep adding more properties and expanding on the first 10 000,” he says. “I think we will go beyond our target of 30 000ha for this park because in the pipeline, including the 10 000ha, we’re sitting at about 22 000ha.”
Eleven or so black private landowners have indicated a willingness to participate, Nsibande says. WWF-SA is also engaging with three traditional authorities about including communal land.
But reaching this point required a change in approach. The project was initially based on acquiring land for conservation, with WWF-SA buying properties and handing them to SANParks to manage. During early engagements, however, landowners did not want to sell.
“The landowners told us to our faces: ‘We are not sellers of the land in this area, we are buyers of the land,’” Nsibande remembers.
Many were fifth- or sixth-generation landowners who wanted to remain on their properties and pass their farms to the next generation. They did not want their land fenced off in the way they associated with conventional national parks.
“They wanted something different that would resonate with them and that’s when we came with this idea of a contractual park.”
A waterfall on the grasslands. The Eastern Cape Drakensberg Strategic Water Source Area is the least protected of the 22 Strategic Water Source Areas in South Africa. Photos: Angus Burns/WWF
The team negotiated agreements with landowners, developing a model for conservation in a region where agriculture remains the main activity.
For Delwyn Roberts, a participating landowner, the novel arrangement offers a way to establish whether farming practices are improving the condition of the land.
“At the end of the day in agriculture, you are concerned about the next generation,” he says. “The reason we wanted to take part is to have a measurable figure that shows we are improving what we are doing.”
Roberts studied agricultural pro-duction, which included grassland science, and conducted veld condition assessments after graduating. But the demands of running a farm leave little time for monitoring.
“On your own farm, you get so busy, tied up doing what you normally do … It’s great to have professionals, proper professionals, getting this information for us.”
The assessments are helping him determine how many animals his land can support. In the past, he would have stocked his farms to capacity. “But now you’ve got a veld condition assessment that tells you exactly what the farm’s capacity is, and I need to try and stick to that.”
The health of the grassland is also central to the park’s wider conservation purpose. Natasha Pimblett, SANParks’ manager for park expansion in park planning and development, describes the Eastern Cape Drakensberg Strategic Water Source Area as the least protected strategic in South Africa.
The watershed feeds the Orange River system to the west and the Mzimvubu River to the east, which reaches the Indian Ocean at Port St Johns. Both systems supply downstream communities.
The region is also rich in plant species found nowhere else. A 2022 bioblitz involving 51 participants from 20 institutions discovered several new species, as well as other rare species, Pimblett says.
The priority is to complete the park’s management plan with landowners and other stakeholders. It will set out property-specific conservation actions informed by baseline assessments, with progress monitored over time, Pimblett says.
The agreements recognise farming activities while distinguishing natural rangelands used for sustainable grazing from more intensive agricultural areas. SANParks has identified fire management, invasive alien plants and rangeland degradation as key challenges.
For Roberts, the value of the pro-gramme lies in understanding what is happening on his farms and using that information to make decisions. “At the end of the day, the livestock you’re running on the farm is just a picture of what’s happening on the ground. If you damage what’s on the ground, you will see it in the livestock, so it is all connected. To run decent cattle, you need decent grass.” He sees protecting the grassland as a way to maintain the land’s productive capacity while leaving something for future generations.
“You can protect what you have and tailor profitability while doing that and have something for the next generation, whether it’s my own kids or not, that’s as good or better than what we started with,” he says. “That is a noble cause, to hand something over better than you received it.”
But Roberts does not expect to see changes for some time. “This is a long-term process. You can destroy grasslands quickly, not that ours are destroyed, but repairing things takes many, many years.”
He hopes visible improvements and potential financial incentives will encourage more landowners to participate. These could include pre-miums for meat or wool produced on conservation land, or income from carbon credits in the future.
“If we see improvement, especially if we see some financial gains out of it … I guess if there is financial support, there is motivation for more people to join,” he says. “It’s a small proportion of us that are taking the initial step. It’s a leap of faith. It’s a very positive initiative and we’re excited to see what happens over the next five, 10, 15 years, to see where we’re going.”
Nsibande says the project has brought together 20 partners, including municipalities, NGOs and government departments. The involvement of the agriculture department reflects the aim of finding ways for conservation and farming to coexist. The park also anchors the wider Grasslands Mega Living Landscape, connecting protected land with farms and communal land so that species can move and adapt to a changing climate.
Pimblett identifies agroecology, sustainable wool production and local enterprise development as potential ways for people in the region to benefit from conservation. For Nsibande, the project has changed his understanding of what conservation involves.
Trained in environmental management and conservation, he says that working alongside generations of farmers has taught him about agricultural production, responsible wool standards, lambing, sheep shearing and agroecology.
“I feel like I’ve transformed from conservation to agriculture and that comes from the learnings, most of them are coming from the people in the landscape, like the farmers.”
Nsibande has also seen a change in the relationships that underpin the project. Some landowners who initially wanted little to do with him have become friends and collaborators.
“I’ve got so many people where we started on the wrong foot, they didn’t want to hear the word ‘Themba’, they didn’t want to see me, but now whenever we meet, we smile and wave, or we sit and chat over a cup of coffee or a glass of a soft drink.”
Some open their homes to him and welcome him in. “That is a gamechanger. It means we are getting somewhere, starting from a very dark place, where like: ‘Will I ever even be able to drive past these areas?’ to the point now where we’re like: ‘Let’s sit down and chat about these things.’”