PEACE BY PIECE
The Maputo Special Reserve is part of a grand conservation dream, but what a part it is. By Elizabeth Sleith
For many South African travellers, Mozambique is a Bob Dylan song — that “magical land” of sun, sand and sea, made for lovers and lazy folk. For others, it’s the sensory overload of Maputo; or the small-town hedonism of Ponta do Ouro, where little kids build sandcastles, and bigger kids chug rum-and-raspberry and ride quad bikes down the streets — sometimes at the same time. What it’s never really had a reputation for being is a wildlife destination. And yet, just beyond the Kosi Bay/Ponta do Ouro border, lies a spot that some believe could be the poster child for conservation in Africa: the 1 040km² Maputo Special Reserve (MSR).
LINES IN THE SAND
When the MSR was declared in 1932, it was named the Elephant Reserve in honour of its primary charges — the last remaining coastal herd of elephant in Southern Africa.
Once, these lovely beasts — including some of the world’s largest “tuskers” — lumbered freely across a line they couldn’t see anyway, between southern Mozambique and Maputaland in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
But in the mayhem of the 1975-1992 civil war, they were so imperilled that another reserve, the Tembe, was declared in South Africa — and fenced on three sides for their protection, but still leaving them free to roam their old migratory routes across the border.
In 1989, the fourth “protection” fence went up. And what was once a single, freeranging