Situated northeast of Johannesburg and close to the Limpopo River, the Maremani Nature Reserve covers 41 000 ha of tropical savannah. The international Aage V. Jensen Charity Foundation for nature preservation and wildlife protection owns the entire area, which has been acquired in order to once again open up the land to those indigenous plants and animals that were being threatened by human impact.

The vision and mission for the Maremani Nature Reserve envisage the restoration of the natural attributes of the environment to a level where they represent their pristine nature as closely as possible.

Most of the northern and north-eastern regions of South Africa, commonly referred to as Bushveld and Lowveld, are notoriously drought prone and consequently high-risk areas for dryland farming and, at best, marginal for domestic stock farming. On the other hand, the highly diversified range of attractions provided by wildlife – especially in remote wilderness areas – has opened new opportunities of land-use. The natural fauna and flora has adapted to the highly variable and oscillating climatic patterns and in their most pristine state offer the greatest potential in terms of sustainable land-use practises.

In South Africa national and provincial parks are well established and largely provide for the local population. From the early 1970’s private game lodges have steadily increased, with sharp increases during the 1990’s. This development has been widely welcomed, both from an economic and conservation point of view and is especially attractive due to the highly diversified potential of nature-based opportunities it offers.

The major attractions offered by natural surroundings are their biodiversity and wilderness ambience. In terms of their economic importance these attributes may be seen as the products on offer. In this respect and as a general rule, the wilderness atmosphere and biodiversity qualities of an area are enhanced by its size. Consequently this has prompted the consolidation of erstwhile fragmented farming land into larger, uniformly managed areas, either by way of multi-owner contractual agreement or single owner land purchases.

 


These developments have been hailed in South Africa as one of the major economic cornerstones of the future!

Aage V. Jensen Charity Foundation identified the opportunities and acquired its first properties, comprising some 14 000 ha, in 1999. Since then the hectarage has grown to roughly 41 000 ha, representing a numbers of farms and portions of farms. These farms have had a chequered history of land-use practises but from the outset the ultimate objective has been to rehabilitate them to as closely as possible to their once pristine state – a goal that has seen considerable progress over the past few years and continues to grow in stature towards the ultimate achievement.