The Kruger National Park (KNP) has taken another important step towards cementing cordial relationships with neigbouring communities, by presenting traditional healers in Limpopo’s Makuya community with a number of medicinal tree species from its Skukuza nursery of indigenous plants.

Some medicinal tree species are no longer available in communities adjoining the park. The tree saplings will be planted in areas specially set aside in the Makuya area. It is intended that the traditional healers will be able to create a sustainable resource of these trees at their own homes.

Speaking at the handing-over ceremony at Skukuza, KNP Executive Director Dr Bandile Mkhize said he hoped the event would signal the start of a long-term partnership. He announced that the ongoing process would be managed by the park’s People and Conservation Department.

Mkhize pointed out that the initiative was based on the concept of sustainable utilisation of natural resources, as put forward by the IUCN (World Conservation Union) and the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism’s community-based Natural Resource Management Programme.

He said the Kruger National Park remained the pride and joy of all South Africans, and therefore everyone should receive benefits from projects of this nature, so that a win-win situation could be created: “The traditional healers will be able to harvest indigenous trees – close to their villages too – and the integrity of the wilderness of the Kruger National Park will also be protected,” he explained.

This first donation of trees should be seen as a gesture of goodwill, and more trees would follow as the project unfolded, Mkhize added.