Game reserve boost for leaders – and tourists

Mpumalanga is tackling five years of missed conservation performance targets with South Africa’s first dedicated coaching programme for nature reserve managers. The programme covers eight protected areas, including Blyde River Canyon and Manyeleti.

The six-month Transformative Leadership in Conservation (TLC) programme will put coaches directly into reserves and pair managers with remote mentors, with a target of improving each reserve’s management effectiveness score by 10%.

The initiative is a partnership between Leadership for Conservation in Africa (LCA), the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA), Germany’s Shirika and conservation organisation WeWild Africa.

MTPA manages 17 provincial nature reserves across three district municipalities, which are home to 85 threatened and 57 endangered species. These protected areas are also important tourism attractions, drawing visitors to Mpumalanga’s mountains, wildlife destinations and natural heritage sites.

Improving how they are managed has direct implications for conservation and the visitor experience, especially where limited resources place pressure on reserve operations.

The TLC programme was launched with a three-day workshop at Gooderson Kloppenheim Country Estate Hotel in September. It is designed around the operational challenges faced by individual reserve managers, combining face-to-face coaching in the reserves with virtual mentoring.

Coaches work directly with managers to identify improvements in day-to-day operations, and mentors help develop leadership and decision-making skills.

“Every great leader, professional, and changemaker has benefited from someone willing to share their experience, challenge their thinking and help them see possibilities they may not have recognised themselves,” says Dereck Milburn, CEO of LCA.

The programme will assess performance using the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT), an international system for evaluating the management of protected areas.

Each participating reserve will undergo assessments before and after the programme, with progress also measured against its Integrated Management Plan.

MTPA has set a province-wide METT target of 67%, and the TLC programme aims to improve the score of each participating reserve by 10%.

The agency acknowledges that management performance has been a persistent challenge.

“This intervention is critical for the entity, as we have faced persistent challenges in achieving our Annual Performance Plan targets over the past five years,” says Nomcebo Kunene, MTPA’s executive manager for biodiversity conservation.

“Beyond improving the METT scores of individual reserves, the programme is an opportunity to strengthen leadership, restore morale and enhance the performance of our Reserve Managers. We want to see this investment translate into better-managed reserves, stronger accountability and tangible improvements in conservation outcomes.”

The programme also forms part of MTPA’s efforts to attract private partnerships and investment into its protected areas.

The connection between conservation management and tourism is significant for destinations such as Blyde River Canyon and Manyeleti, where the condition of protected environments and the effectiveness of reserve operations influence the quality of the tourism offering.

The use of virtual mentoring also allows experienced conservation professionals to support reserve managers remotely, reducing the need for repeated travel and making specialist guidance available beyond formal training workshops.

LCA already operates ShareScreen Africa, a digital knowledge-sharing initiative launched in 2021 to connect conservation expertise across the continent.

The four partner organisations intend to expand the TLC approach beyond Mpumalanga, making it available to other provincial conservation agencies in South Africa.

The first assessment of its effectiveness will come from the changes recorded in each participating reserve’s management score after the six-month programme.

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