Former foes now share zebra

As a boy, Uriel Ngovene would go trekking with his father through the thick bush, hunting antelope to feed his family.

When his community was co-opted into Mozambique's newly established 2.5 million-acre Limpopo National Park a couple of years ago, however, hunting was banned. But Mr. Ngovene, for one, doesn't mind giving up his family's traditional livelihood, he says, because he feels confident that local wildlife will soon prove to be much more valuable alive.

"We know that a park can benefit a country because of tourism," he says.

At least, that is what Mozambican officials are banking on. Former enemies Mozambique and South Africa plan to merge Limpopo with Kruger National Park across the border along with the Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe to eventually create the world's largest wildlife conservation area.

Never mind that there are land mines to clear, infrastructure to build, and 6,000 people to resettle. In coming years, officials say, border fences will disappear from the 23,000-square-mile area, opening up new swaths of land for animals to roam and offering visitors greater access to some of southern Africa's most pristine wilderness.

This concept of creating parks and conservation areas that straddle national boundaries is gaining momentum across southern Africa, says Willem van Riet, chief executive officer of the Peace Parks Foundation, a South African organization that is promoting the creation of 22 different transfrontier conservation areas across the continent.

The first peace park, the Kgalagai Transfrontier Park, shared by South Africa and Botswana, opened in May 2000. Eventually, the foundation even hopes to see such parks in war-torn countries like Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

South Africa's Kruger National Park, one of the continent's foremost attractions, draws 2 million visitors each year. But until recently, impoverished Mozambique wasn't featured on too many tourist itineraries. That's why officials are excited about the new Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which was officially established in December 2002 and is being funded by Germany, the United States, South Africa, and the World Bank.

The plan, which will combine one of the continent's most established parks with one so new it has yet to open to the public, is widely regarded as a grand experiment in cross-border conservation and tourism.

Park plans reflect new ideas about the definition of a conservation area: people will live and farm in some places, communities will develop their own forms of cultural tourism and ecotourism, and limited hunting may even be allowed in some areas.

"People used to think of Africa as wildness with pockets of civilization," professor van Riet says. "What has now happened is that Africa has become mostly civilized with pockets of wildness."

Removing the border fences between parks is becoming more crucial as animal populations grow increasingly isolated from one another and are hemmed in by agriculture and rural population growth outside park areas, he adds.

To many, the park also symbolizes a new era of cooperation and stability taking hold in the region. When Mozambique emerged from its devastating 16-year civil war in 1992, President Joaquim Chissano approached neighboring countries and environmental groups for help in establishing new parks to link up with existing ones across borders in order to attract badly-needed tourist dollars into the country.

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