IUCN-WCPA Mountains Network--Drakensberg Workshop, 5th World Parks Congress, Durban, South Africa September 2003 --World Parks Congress Outputs

There continues to be an impressive array of outputs from the World Parks Congress. You can click on the hyperlinked images on the right side of this page to get to specific information.

Next Steps

The Wilderness Task Force was launched at the Congress to explore ways to represent wilderness issues in the IUCN structure. The WTF will be co-chaired by The WILD Foundation president Vance Martin and Khulani Mkhize, CEO of KwaZulu Natal Wildlife, and is open to participation by all IUCN members. It ensured that wilderness protection issues were a key component of the larger protected area debate at the World Parks Congress in Durban (South Africa, September 2003). Going forward, it will also help coordinate wilderness-related issues in IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas, and will play a key role in The WILD Planet Project leading to the 8th World Wilderness Congress.

Reliving and Remembering What Was Said and Done

The "Linkages" section of the International Institute for Sustainable Development website has a wonderful day-by-day summary of events that includes downloadable audio clips and photos, plus text offered in three formats: .htm., .pdf, and .txt. Also available at that page is a "SUMMARY REPORT OF THE VTH IUCN WORLD PARKS CONGRESS: BENEFITS BEYOND BOUNDARIES".

Other images from the Congress can be viewed on the Congress Images link on this page or in the Photo Gallery section. If you have other images from the Congress or Workshop to share, please refer to the information in the Photo Gallery.

Press Coverage of our Drakensberg Workshop

Mervyn Gans of the Mountain Club of South Africa—and his digital camera—were instrumental in getting high-level photo coverage in the press for our workshop group. On September 10th an article appeared in the Natal Daily News highlighting our group's climb of the Sentinel in the Drakensberg Mountains. The article also gives special mention of the late mountain rescue chief and leading conservationist, Greig Stewart and his work on the Maloti-Drakensberg transfrontier conservation project. It featured Mervyn's dramatic photo of workshop delegates Linda McMillan, Dave Morris, Trevor Sandwith, and one of our guides from the Mountain Club of South Africa (MCSA), Ian Cox, with the Devil's Tooth gendarme (spike of rock) in the background (see upper left image of this page).

On September 17th all the major newspapers of South Africa ran a SPECIAL FEATURE highlighting the World Parks Congress, again using Mervyn's dramatic photo of our group. I have made much higher resolution scan of this article, but at 14 MB it will choke all but the fastest Internet connections. If you really need this file, please let me know and I will send it to you on a CD. The links on this page will bring up smaller files that can be printed out from your desktop.

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