Karoo Gas may Compromise Mega Park Plan - Bundu Gas and Oil versus Samara Private Game Reserve

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(Free-Press-Release.com) June 25, 2009 -- Karoo gas exploration may compromise mega-park plan


Guy Rogers ENVIRONMENT & TOURISM EDITOR rogersg@avusa.co.za



THE proposed scheme to explore for gas in the Karoo south of Graaff-Reinet could compromise a long-standing government-endorsed plan to create a mega- park, says senior SA National Parks official Dr Stephen Holness.

Holness, a park planner, said the site identified by Bundu Gas & Oil Exploration in its application to Petroleum SA was within the identified expansion footprint of the mega-park.

“It has been approved within the expansion plans of the two national parks and was also approved this year by Minmec, the body which co-ordinates dealings between the national Environment Department and the provincial departments.”

The link between the parks would allow for the migration of species under pressure from climate change, he said.

“It will also allow for the expansion of habitat for threatened species, like mountain zebra. If this project is compromised – then their survival could be too.

“Any development that transforms this area will in the long-term compromise biodiversity, conservation and eco-tourism benefits.”

The park expansion project was raised by Camdeboo National Park at a fractious public meeting hosted by Bundu in Pearston last week.

Camdeboo National Park manager Peter Burdett said he was disappointed that SANParks had not been contacted for its input into Bundu‘s environmental management programme report (EMPR). “It would have been nice to have been able to make contributions at the outset, but we knew nothing about it. My understanding is that a copy will now be sent to me for my comment.”

Burdett said the link between Camdeboo and Mountain Zebra was progressing well and there were just “five or six farms” impeding an open passage for wildlife through the milestone Karoo conservation corridor project. The envisaged 300000ha protected mega-park will link Camdeboo National Park outside Graaff-Reinet to Mountain Zebra National Park near Cradock in an east-west corridor through Samara, Mount Camdeboo and Santa Sana private game reserves, with adjoining farms being purchased outright or incorporated under some form of conservation lease.

Set to be realised in three to seven years, the mega-park project would benefit the environment, jobs and the economy, Holness said.

At only 19000ha, Camdeboo alone generated 26000 “person days” last year, over and above its 21 permanent staff and six contract staff.

These person days included people employed in clearing alien bush like agave, prickly pear and cosmopolitan weed, building gabions to stabilise eroded ground, removing fences and old buildings from rehabilitating farmland and planting spekboom for conservation and carbon sequestration purposes.

The east-west corridor would also help to conserve South Africa‘s two most threatened biomes, Nama Karoo and grassland, he noted.

While the exploration phase of the gas project might be relatively unobtrusive, the concern is that the work needed to install the drill and the difficulty of rehabilitating land in the Karoo might leave a network of scars visible from a long way off, he said.

Bundu environmental consultant Liam Whitlow of Environmental Impact Management Services in Johannesburg said his understanding was that SANParks had been contacted for its comment in the EMPR, but a mistake might have been made and “we are definitely going to contact them now”.

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conservation gas and oil     Global enviromental protection     Liam Whitlow EIMS     Minmec SANPark     tourism