Provincial reserves form a critical component of the country’s conservation estate, safeguarding biodiversity, ecological connectivity, and rural livelihoods.

Investigation conclusion: However, an extensive field investigation conducted for the EMS Foundation between February and June 2025 across 53 provincial reserves in all nine provinces reveals that the majority of these protected areas are no longer functioning as intended. Infrastructure collapse, severe underfunding, governance failures, and escalating environmental pressures have rendered many reserves ineffective or entirely inaccessible to the public.

This situation represents not merely administrative mismanagement but a profound failure to uphold South Africa’s constitutional environmental obligations and its commitments to global biodiversity protection.

The published report can be found here

Published articles: (Daily Maverick)