Establishing a transfrontier conservation area—connected protected areas across international borders—is like building a puzzle with loose-fitting pieces. Natural areas, which generations ago would have had wildlife freely roaming across wide open spaces, have, due to human development, become isolated and populations fragmented into separate protected areas. Peace Parks Foundation’s mission is to reconnect these areas across southern Africa.
Peace Parks does this by improving the functioning and sustainability of five transfrontier conservation areas by protecting and professionally managing 12 key Protected Areas and establishing restored ecological connectivity through 11 key corridors.
A corridor is a protected area that links other established protected areas. In 2011, nine years after Peace Parks got involved in supporting the 1 million-hectare Lubombo Transfrontier Conservation and Resource Area, and with the support of the Dutch Postcode Lottery, the Futi Corridor was established to connect Tembe Elephant Park in South Africa and Maputo Special Reserve (the previous name of Maputo National Park) in Mozambique. This enabled coastal elephants and other wildlife to reclaim their ancient migration patterns along the Futi River and Rio Maputo floodplains.
Established protected areas need to be restored and must be kept healthy, particularly where the reclaimed land has been disturbed by humans. When the Futi Corridor was proclaimed, it absorbed former community land, which included an 800-hectare plantation of southern blue gum eucalyptus trees, which are not native to the area and harm natural flora (also known as ‘alien invasive’ trees). Notorious for sucking up groundwater, the planted trees efficiently dried out patches of land that locals could then use for growing crops.
While these trees are useful for agriculture, they pose a serious threat to natural ecosystems and not only deplete precious groundwater but also crowd out local indigenous vegetation and are not edible for resident wildlife. Covering the size of almost 1 500 football fields, removing these trees is a mammoth task and has been a routine annual conservation project for Peace Parks and its local community team.
In an all-around conservation success, this project, supported by Fundo Ambiental do Ministério do Ambiente e Ação Climática de Portugal, is not only reviving natural ecosystems, but the collected timber is also distributed to the surrounding communities or used for infrastructure development in the park.Are invasive plants a threat in a protected area you visited recently? Share your experiences and observations in the comments and subscribe to the PeaceParks.TV newsletter to follow the transformative journey of the Futi Corridor.
