The Vth IUCN World Parks Congress defines a private protected area as:
... land parcel of any size that is predominantly managed for biodiversity conservation, protected with or without formal government recognition, and is owned or otherwise secured by individuals, communities, corporations or non-governmental organisations.
(International Union for the Conservation of Nature - IUCN, 2003: 275)
Although there is not much that is known about private Parks because of their diversity and their exclusion from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) classification protocol, they are increasing in numbers (Weaver, 2001). Furthermore, Weaver (2001; 2006) states those private protected areas continue to exist and grow because of the failure of government to adequately protect natural environment and depleting biodiversity.
This position is supported by Langholz and Lassoie (2001) who state that most governments from developing countries fail to adequately support public Parks because of, among other reasons, department crisis which results in developing countries’ governments usually reducing
funding towards public Parks. Langholz et al. (2000) state that the creation of private Parks is one of the strategies in place to protect those areas that would never be covered under public Parks/protection. Private Parks are also economically lucrative for the owners. Langholz and Lassoie (2001) indicate that when private Parks are involved in ecotourism ventures they represent a livelihood strategy that has economic and ecological viability. According to Weaver (2001), the growth of ecotourism has also contributed to the proliferation of private Parks.
Langholz et al. (2000) assert that one of the important market values for private Parks is their profitability; they can be very profitable projects. Allen and Brennan (2004) specifically state that private Parks usually make more profit than public Parks when the former are involved in ecotourism related ventures.
Langholz (1996) illustrates that the existence of private Parks can be traced back to protected lands which were used for royal hunting only which catered for nobles and at the same time conserved biodiversity and halted human encroachments. Hunting, according to Fennell (2003), was a consumptive activity linked to the tourism industry which was undertaken by sport, commercial and subsistence hunters. However, as time went by, it was evident that the resources were depleting and subsistence hunters were denied the right to hunt and that created tension between those who had access and those who had no access to hunting areas (Fennell, 2003).
This resulted in the creation of private land to control hunting (Fennell, 2003). Kerley (2003) and Hulme and Murphree (2001) point out that the conservation policies and the tourism market in most private game reserves in South Africa have focused on the more charismatic species exemplified by the “Big five” (lion, elephant, rhinocerous, leopard and the buffalo) which are used as the top attraction to the private game reserves.
Both public and private Parks also have strengths and weaknesses in terms of their ecological, economic and social functions (Langholz and Lassoie, 2001). Private Parks are used for, among other things, air and water purification and recreational purposes, but their key strengths are in biodiversity protection (Langholz and Lassoie, 2001). Several authors highlight the importance of private Parks which are summarised below:
• Conserving critical sites for biodiversity in threatened ecosystems: According to Jones et al. (2005), many privately conserved areas protect a variety of natural habitats that would
otherwise be converted to other forms of land use, and many are trying to restore degraded land.
• Protecting buffer zones: Private Parks directly protect lands outside the Park, expanding the core area of protection and helping to conserve the Park’s resources, and also help protect Park boundaries by establishing a conservation presence at key access points, particularly in less developed countries (LDCs) which may lack funding for adequate protection of national Parks (ELI, 2003). Brandon (1997) states that by integrating rural development approaches relating to the park, such as ecotourism, private conservation efforts help to foster critical local support for the public protected areas through mitigating the costs to local communities of biological conservation within protected areas by providing local people with alternative and improved livelihoods.
• Linking Parks through conservation corridors: Public protected areas often include private lands within their boundaries. Western (1989) asserts that government reserves often form core wildlife areas of larger systems while the privately conserved lands provide inholding or migration corridors important as seasonal dispersal areas for species such as elephants that need to move between dispersed areas for survival.
• Links for government conservation efforts: According to the IUCN (2003) and Figgis et al. (2005), there is a fundamental recognition that private-public partnerships serve as increasingly important components of national conservation strategies, providing valuable additional funds and capacity at a time when many governments are slowing the rate at which they establish new protected areas due to over-stretched governments.
• Promoting the sustainable use of natural resources: Mulder and Coppolillo (2005) indicate that by creating legal methods to balance conservation with extractive uses, private lands conservation tools are used to ensure the sustainability of practices such as forestry, grazing, watershed protection, and recreation, as well as their compatibility with conservation objectives.
In terms of disadvantages, unlike public Parks which are permanently protected, most private Parks are informally protected and they are smaller in size (Langholz, 1996). Furthermore,
private Parks can place profit over environmental protection in many ways, such as exceeding the Park’s carrying capacity by accommodating more tourists (Langholz and Lassoie, 2001).
Langholz and Lassoie (2001) also assert that private Parks can also serve wealthy tourists only, and forget about the needs of local rural communities surrounding them. Furthermore, Gatua (2006) further contends that the enclosure of land for wildlife use infringes upon the rights of communities to use land in areas around or in close proximity to them.
Sims-Castley et al’s. (2002) study on private game reserves in South Africa indicates that ownership of private game reserves in the country is mainly in the form of registered companies with multiple shareholders. The study points out that setting up a private game reserve in South Africa is a costly undertaking, requiring an initial outlay of anywhere from US$ 1.3 million to as much as US$ 7.8 million (on average US$ 4.6 million). Capital expenditures associated with establishing a private game reserve as identified in the survey include: land acquisition, construction of buildings (for example, offices, hotels and lodges), wildlife management (for example, re-introduction of species), infrastructure development (for example, roads, water provision and fencing), acquisition of equipment (for example, vehicles and radios), landscaping (for example, rehabilitation of eroded areas and removal of alien species), and costs of the transition and marketing. They indicate that in some instances, individual landowners have formed co-operative partnerships with their neighbours. Previous land uses on the private game reserves include livestock farming (beef, dairy), small stock farming (sheep, goats) or a combination with a minimal amount of cultivation. This illustrates that land previously used for agricultural purposes has been changed for ecotourism linked to wildlife conservation.