Louise Swemmer

South African National Parks · Scientific Services

There are renewed global efforts to make wildlife conservation the foundation for broad-based economic development. This article looks at these tendencies in the ‘Kruger to Canyons’ (K2C) biosphere region in South Africa, encompassing the Kruger National Park and adjacent settlement areas and reserves. Various forms of the wildlife economy have a l...

Protected areas (PAs) play a critical role in safeguarding Earth's biodiversity and contributing to human wellbeing. Maintenance of ecological intactness, financial viability and social relevance influence PA sustainability. We explore how COVID-19 and associated lockdown regulations influenced the sustainability of South Africa's largest PA manage...

A mopane worm (Imbrasia belina) harvesting project in the Kruger National Park (KNP) was used as a case study to test whether conservation related benefit sharing has a net positive impact on multiple dimensions of human well-being. Furthermore, the study assessed whether and to what degree, sharing such benefits influenced local perceptions of con...

Objectives: (1) To evaluate how ecosystem services may be utilized to either reinforce or fracture the planning and development practices that emerged from segregation and economic exclusion; (2) To survey the current state of ecosystem service assessments and synthesize a growing number of recommendations from the literature for renovating ecosyst...

Education opportunities, capacity building and scientific knowledge are poorly studied intellectual ecosystem services (IES), especially as generated by protected areas (PAs). Based on the cascade model of ecosystem services, we use simple indicators to quantify IES generated in the Kruger National Park (KNP), South Africa. IES are potentially valu...

The sustainability of protected areas is dependent on societal support. Protected area relevance (meaning and value) to society is based on vested interest grown through conservation related benefit accrual that outweighs costs. Protected areas generally don't report on their total societal impact in part due to a lack of an appropriate framework t...

More examples of positive and negative outcomes of community-based conservation initiatives aimed at benefit sharing are surfacing globally, and there is increasing interest in who wins and who loses at multiple scales. However, the term “benefit sharing” is not well defined in the context of protected areas, hindering the effective implementation...

Tourism is critical source of financing for conservation in Africa. South African National Parks (SANParks) raises in excess of 80% of their own funds through tourism revenue. SANParks has a culture of co-learning between scientists and conservation managers through a process known as strategic adaptive management (SAM). Despite the critical role t...

In this study, we explored how rainfall manipulation influenced competitive interactions between grasses and juvenile trees (small nonreproductive trees capable of resprouting) in savanna. To do this, we manipulated rainfall amount in the field using an incomplete factorial experiment that determined the effects of rainfall reduction, no manipulati...

South African National Parks (SANParks) has a history of formal and informal natural resource use that is characterised by polarised views on national conservation interests and benefits to communities. Current efforts aim to determine the sustainability of existing resource use in parks and to formalise these activities through the development of...

South African National Parks (SANParks) has a history of formal and informal natural resource use that is characterised by polarised views on national conservation interests and benefits to communities. Current efforts aim to determine the sustainability of existing resource use in parks and to formalise these activities through the development of...

Biodiversity conservation is often measurable and achievable and has been reasonably successful within the boundaries of national parks. However, the concept of parks providing tangible benefits and hence being seen as 'valuable' to the majority of the nation has been more difficult to define, measure and, importantly, deliver on. This function has...

The amount of carbon stored in savannas represents a significant uncertainty in global carbon budgets, primarily because fire causes actual biomass to differ from potential biomass. We analyzed the structural response of woody plants to long-term experimental burning in savannas. The experiment uses a randomized block design to examine fire exclusi...