Africa’s largest national park to be in Namibia

NAMIBIA will soon have the largest national park in Africa, and the eighth largest in the world – provisionally called the Namib Skeleton Coast National Park (NSCNP) – an area of about 108 000 square kilometres stretching along the coast between the Orange and Kunene rivers.

What is considered by local conservationists to be ‘the decade’s greatest conservation achievement worldwide’ may be realised as soon as mid-2009.
This will be after the Management and Development Plan for the Central Coast, which is from Sandwich Harbour south of Walvis Bay to the Ugab River mouth north of Henties Bay, is approved by Cabinet and the area declared a conservation area by February next year.
The declaration of the Central Coast conservation area is the last piece of the puzzle that will bring the entire Namibian coastline under protection; paving the way for the declaration of the NSCNP.
The name still has to be approved, but is already used in the draft Management and Development Plan. According to Peter Tarr of the Southern African Institute for Environmental Assessment, and a consultant to the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET), the super-park will be the only one in the world that includes a country’s entire coastline.
It will also be flanked by national parks in two neighbouring countries – the Iona National Park in southern Angola and the Richtersveld National Park in South Africa’s northern Cape.
This means the NSCNP will enjoy support from environmental authorities in the two neighbouring countries.
The new park will extend for a couple of kilometres into the ocean. This will lead to co-management between the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources.
‘Besides the marine and island conservancies along Namibia’s coast, there is the aspect of angling. The value of angling fish is worth protecting. Statistics show that people would pay more than N$200 for a fish angled,’ said Tarr.
There will also be a west-east extension, which will aid animal migration through private farms and inland conservancies.

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