South Africa's 22nd National Park

The declaration of a national park near Graaff-Reinet, to be called the Camdeboo National Park, brings the number of parks in South Africa to 22. It constitutes 14 500 hectares of land donated by the World Wide Fund for Nature in South Africa (WWF-SA). In his speech announcing the park the South African Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, said the aim is "to eventually link it with the Mountain Zebra National Park to form the basis of a single mega-conservation area over 120km in length and including up to 520,000 hectares of land under conservation ... this new park will be a major source of growth and investment for this region of the Karoo."