This will spread to community involvement in national parks. The question of funding national parks is one which both men are also acutely aware of and inputs will come from both on commercial strategy and the management of business which are non-core to the primary mission of national parks. Alternative park management strategies, for example the Richtersveld contractual park, will be considered as a way of getting more and better community involvement in national parks. Last, but not least, the two will be looking at further action in terms of combating invasive species and management of alien vegetation and the all-important question of getting the youth of both countries more involved in conservation and the environment generally. Research study on Eastern Cape estuaries Increasing constraints and demands of South Africa's limited water resources pose a serious threat to many of the country's 289 estuaries.
Estuaries depend on freshwater inflow for their ecological functioning.
Increased water abstraction from rivers have an impact on numerous estuaries including the Kromme, Kariega, Seekoei and Orange rivers and in some cases estuaries are changing, silting up and even closing completely. The estuaries were selected because they differ in the amount of fresh water received from their rivers. The Sundays estuary has a continuous freshwater inflow, while the Kromme is deprived of freshwater and the Swartkops is intermediate. According to WRC research manager Steve Mitchell, estuaries need a sufficient water level for a number of reasons. Freshwater inflow at the tidal head creates a salinity balance, floods are needed to prevent an accumulation of marine sand and to open up estuary mouths and lastly, rivers generally carry higher concentrations of nutrients compared with seawater.