Changing Institutions to Respond to Challenges: North West Parks, South Africa

Abstract

Following decades of stringent conservation rules in the post-colonial period in southern Africa, which tended to marginalize and exclude indigenous rural inhabitants, in some countries new perspectives on conservation began to creep in during the 1970s. Specifically, three Fulbright Scholars from the Leopold school of thinking at the University of California – Thane Riney, Ray Dasmann and Archie Mossman – visited Zimbabwe and looked into aspects of the wildlife industry in the prevailing conservation environment, game ranching and adaptive management, among other issues. Riney in particular stressed the critical links between ecological, economic and socio-political forces in successful conservation. The formation of the Southern African Regional Commission for the Conservation and Utilization of the Soil encouraged free thinking, and greatly facilitated the spread of the ideas that had emanated from these three Fulbright scholars among the southern African conservation and wildlife fraternity. These ideas found fertile ground in the minds of the ecologists and managers employed to develop the fledgling Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa during the early 1980s.