Project: Feasibility study of the K2C Conservation and Development River Corridor Project.
Location: Sections of the Blyde & Olifants Rivers (& adjacent land use activities), in Mpumalanga and Limpopo Provinces, South Africa.
Client: Kruger to Canyons (K2C) Biosphere Region, C/O: Marie-Tinka Uys
Project Partner: Jan Vermeulen.
Task & implementation: Biovista conducted a feasibility study of the K2C Conservation and Development Corridor Project to investigate the possibility of establishing a corridor in the region. The core objectives of this feasibility study included: 1. determining the value of improving the provision of ecosystem services to residents of the region, with special reference to catchments, wetlands and rivers. 2. Establishing the value of improving biodiversity conservation in particular in areas outside the formal protected areas. 3. The value of creating sustainable local economic development. And 4. Defining an overview of the existing enabling policy environment and its bottlenecks for the corridors (e.g. Protected Area Expansion Strategy and Stewardship Programme). There were several deliverables in which the situation analysis, desired state and proposed plan were presented by Biovista. The ecological and social information was provided for the relevant areas, including a set of maps that graphically depicted the land claims, land uses and assorted ecological data in the context of the proposed corridors.