aunching
the Heritage Park Project
The Signing Ceremony
On 5 April 2005 history was made when MEC Duma Ndhleleni of the North West Province launched the unique Heritage Park Project.
He signed agreements with those departments and municipalities in the province that will irreversibly change the face of a significant rural part of that province forever.
Key stakeholders, mandated by government to improve the quality of life of the people of the province, publicly committed to one of the most important conservation and socio-economic upliftment programmes in recent times and, with the Premier, unveilled the branding of the Heritage Park.
The Heritage Park is a shared vision, which represents the expansion, and ultimate linkage of Pilanesberg National Park and Madikwe Game Reserve, over the next fifteen to twenty years to form a conservation area of more than 250,000 hectares in a drive to bring new economic hope to one of the poorest and remotest parts of the North West Province.
The launch ceremony celebrated the resolve, pioneering courage and cooperative spirit of those that have worked so hard during the past few years to bring the Heritage Park concept to a historical point of actual departure.
Key stakeholders believe in the ability of the Heritage Park to improve the quality of lives of hundreds of people in a remote and impoverished but attractively wild part of our country.
They publicly demonstrated their commitment to the implementation of the Heritage Park through the formation of the Heritage Company by signing memorandums of understanding.
Key implementing agencies jointly forming the Heritage Park Company are:
Premier’s
Office
Department of
Agriculture, Conservation, Environment and Tourism
North West Parks
and Tourism Board
Bojanala Platinum
District Municipality
Central District
Municipality
Moses Kotane
Local Municipality
Zeerust Local
Municipality.
This exciting venture is built on three pillars: partnership, wildlife and cultural heritage. The North West Parks and Tourism Board (NWPTB), as protected area and tourism development and management agent of the North West Province, is partnering with private land owners, communities, municipalities, government departments and development agencies to facilitate the implementation of the project.
"This ambitious project is unique in that it is developed with and for the benefit of current land owners who are offered an opportunity to incorporate their land with the proclaimed Protected Areas on a voluntary basis, so that they themselves can benefit from this tourism potential" says Charles Ndabeni, CEO of the NWPTB.
He emphasises that the first goal of the Heritage Park Project is to help relieve poverty by creating job opportunities and by stimulating tourism.
The second goal is to increase the area of conserved natural landscapes and ecosystems in the North West Province.
The driving force of the project is the rapidly growing tourism demand, and the ideal mechanism for achieving all of this, is the unique model called the Heritage Park.
partnerships, wildlife, cultural heritage ...