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About Parkveld
Parkveld is a plain-English directory of South Africa’s protected places — from Kruger to the smallest municipal reserve.
We list national parks, provincial nature reserves, game reserves, marine protected areas, biosphere reserves and protected heritage sites across the nine provinces. Each entry shows what open data can confirm: type, province and municipality, size, year of proclamation, elevation and international designations.
The records come from Wikidata (public domain, CC0). Province boundaries are from Natural Earth; we use them to place every reserve in its province and to draw the maps. Distances, rankings and “nearest reserve” lists are calculated from coordinates.
Private game reserves, sanctuaries and further nature reserves come from business listings compiled from public map and web sources, checked October 2026 (address, website, opening hours); a listing that is the same place as a protected area already in the directory only adds those details to it. Municipalities are placed from coordinates with the 2016 municipal boundaries (Municipal Demarcation Board via geoBoundaries, CC BY 3.0 IGO). Wildlife lists count the mammal and bird occurrence records shared on GBIF.org within a radius of each reserve; species names, families and IUCN categories come from the GBIF backbone and species photos from Wikimedia Commons.
Parkveld is an independent reference. It is not a booking site and is not affiliated with SANParks, CapeNature, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife or any other conservation authority. Always check gate times, permits and conditions with the managing authority before you travel.
Data sources
- Wikidata — protected areas of South Africa (CC0)
- Natural Earth — province boundaries (public domain)
- Protected Planet / WDPA — protected area identifiers
- Wikimedia Commons — photographs of the parks and species (CC BY / CC BY-SA, authors credited on each page)
- GBIF.org — occurrence records of mammals and birds; GBIF backbone taxonomy and IUCN categories
- geoBoundaries — South African municipalities (OCHA ROSEA / Municipal Demarcation Board, CC BY 3.0 IGO)
- Business listings compiled from public map and web sources, checked October 2026 — private reserves and sanctuaries
Independent catalogue — not affiliated with SANParks, provincial conservation agencies or any reserve listed.
Questions, corrections or data requests: [email protected].