In 2021, I reported in Oryx that Ndumo Game Reserve, one of South Africa’s oldest and a Ramsar Wetland of international importance, was under existential threat (Oryx, 55, 811–812). Following scant acknowledgement of Ndumo’s centenary year (2024), we (a group of concerned South African conservationists with long-term involvement in Ndumo Game Reserve) publicized its historical significance and precarious state in national newspapers. In Koedoe (2025, 67, a1830), I documented correspondence with the provincial conservation authority Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife and Ramsar Africa dating from 2021, noting the lack of action over the status of Ndumo.

In 2025, a special issue of African Journal of Wildlife Research celebrated the rich heritage of ecological research and conservation management in Ndumo. The issue emphasized the Reserve’s ongoing role in providing environmental education to local schoolchildren: unusually, black South African schoolchildren have been visiting since the 1970s. Sir Peter Scott visited in the 1960s, attracted by the Reserve’s fame as a birding destination. My father Tony established the first crocodile research station in the country here, celebrated in one of South Africa’s first televised nature documentaries. Numerous documentaries have since showcased the Reserve’s biodiversity and scenic beauty.

In early 2025, environmental journalist Tony Carnie and I put public pressure on the Department for Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, and were told the long overdue Ramsar Article 32 update report on the well-publicized, dire conservation status of the Reserve was expected by 23 April 2025. We felt cautiously optimistic, given the Ramsar COP15 was convening in neighbouring Zimbabwe in July 2025 (at which South Africa would proclaim a commitment to co-leading wetland conservation in the region).

The Department then advised that their hands were tied until the Department of Water and Sanitation published a statement based on results of a major river catchment survey of the region. This survey had been announced and comments requested through a Government Gazette circular in June 2024, but few conservationists seemed aware of this.

A statement by the Department of Water and Sanitation was published on 6 June 2025, but the Department for Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment then wanted another report from Ezemvelo, including recommendations for remedial action. My suggestion that it would be more democratic—and catalyse action—to convene a workshop that included local stakeholders, given the longstanding impasse, received no response. July and the Ramsar COP came and went, with no report. Ezemvelo’s report was finally submitted to the Department for Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment in August 2025, but not in the required online format, for which the Department indicated it would provide training.

Meanwhile, irrigation, mechanized farming and permanent structures plough across the Phongolo floodplain, once the Reserve’s heartland for the hippopotamus, crocodile nesting and winter grazing. Illegal fishing, hunting, grazing and deforestation continue. As this goes to press, there is still no confirmation that an update report has been submitted to Ramsar.

Ndumo Game Reserve is dying, with conservation efforts ensnared in a labyrinthine process reminiscent of the interminable probate case in Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House.

Aerial view of farming on the Phongolo floodplain in Ndumo Game Reserve in 2023. Photo: supplied.