© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

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Majete Wildlife Park

Understand

African Parks (Majete) Ltd. is the local company established by African Parks for the management of Majete Wildlife Reserve. On 28 March 2003, African Parks, Ltd. and the Government of Malawi signed an agreement providing for African Parks to take over the rehabilitation, management, and development of Majete Wildlife Reserve for 25 years. After 25 years, Majete and all its assets will be returned to the Malawi government. African Parks' vision is to restore, develop, and manage the Reserve in order to demonstrate biodiversity conservation and sustainable natural resource utilization for the benefit of the people of Malawi in general and local communities in particular.

Since African Park's arrival, restocking has taken place in phases, and will continue with the aim of restoring populations of the original species that were present in the Reserve. To date these animals include: two black rhino, buffalo, waterbuck, bushbuck, eland, hartebeest, zebra, bush pig, impala, nyala, and sable. we aim to restock the Reserve with populations of exterminated species, acquired from other protected areas in Malawi and neighboring countries.

A 42km intermediate fence was constructed in 2003 for the initial phase of the project, which encloses 14,000 ha, where all the restocking of game species takes place. When the park's perimeter fence is completed, and the intermediate fence is removed, the game animals will be able to disperse freely into the total area of Majete Wildlife Reserve.

The infrastructure has been upgraded, including construction and maintenance by hand of 150km of new roads within the Reserve, with one drift, and maintenance of the 16km road from Chikwawa to Majete, clearing and maintenance 40km of firebreaks for fire management, completion of 6 scout houses with electricity and water at every house, administration facilities, including a fully equipped workshop and operations room, and Thawale tented camp, with 4 luxury tents, lapa, kitchen, a 44KVA generator and staff/volunteer accommodation. Three artificial waterholes were constructed in the 14,000ha sanctuary.

History

Majete Wildlife Reserve is 691km.sq, and lies at the low attitude of about 100m (see map 1). The Shire River forms part of the eastern boundary. It was gazetted as a Game Reserve in 1955, 50 years ago. Further extensions occurred in 1969 to include dry season water sources, and in 1976 it was extended to include the full width of the Shire River. In 1988 there were estimated to be over 200 elephants in Majete, but by 1992 all had been exterminated.

Landscape

Majete Wildlife Reserve is an area of 70,000ha situated in the Lower Shire Valley, about 70km southwest of Blantyre, the commercial capital of Malawi. It is an area of undulating and hilly country, covered in tall deciduous woodland with beautiful grassy glades and occasional patches of thicket. To the east it is mixed acacia, leadwood and marula savannah with scattered stately baobab trees and patches of ilala palms. All the watercourses have a fringe of riverine thicket and the rugged western highlands are dominated by miombo woodland.

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