Managing and conserving Southern African grasslands with high endemism: The Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation and Development Program

The Maloti–Drakensberg bioregion is the highest part of the southern African grassland biome shared by the Kingdom of Lesotho and South Africa. This bioregion is dominated by the Maloti–Drakensberg mountain range, which forms the eastern boundary between Lesotho and three of South Africa’s provinces, namely, the Orange Free State, Kwa-Zulu/Natal, and the Eastern Cape. The combination of topographical, geological, altitudinal, and climatic variations has resulted in a dramatic landscape characterised by extraordinary natural beauty and rich biodiversity. Although the alpine and subalpine grassland vegetation types in the region are relatively well conserved in relation to other grassland types in the biome, they have been severely affected by a combination of injudicious range management regimes, the spread of alien plants, the establishment of agricultural monocultures, poor infrastructure development and maintenance, and the political engineering of human demographics. Because these grasslands form the most important component of the bioregion’s ecosystems and related services such as maintenance of water catchment integrity, it is critical to derive innovative strategies that ensure sustainable solutions to the problems affecting them. The Maloti–Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation and Development Program seeks to find natural resource and conservation management solutions by integrating biodiversity conservation and socioeconomic growth strategies.