ISimangaliso Wetland Park

iSimangaliso Wetland Park lies along the east coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, roughly 235 kilometres north of Durban by road. As the country’s third-largest protected area, it covers about 3,280 square kilometres of natural ecosystems and stretches 280 kilometres of coastline, from the Mozambican border in the north down to Mapelane, south of the Lake St. Lucia estuary. The iSimangaliso Authority manages the park.

Originally called the Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park, it was renamed on 1 November 2007. The word “iSimangaliso” means “a miracle” or “something wondrous” in Zulu. The name originates from a subject of King Shaka who was sent to the land of the Tsonga; upon his return, he described the beauty he witnessed as a miracle.

The park encompasses numerous areas: Lake St. Lucia, St. Lucia Game Reserve, False Bay Park, Kosi Bay, Lake Eteza Nature Reserve, Lake Sibhayi, St. Lucia Marine Reserve, St. Lucia Marine Sanctuary, Sodwana Bay National Park, Mapelane Nature Reserve, Maputaland Marine Protected Area, Cape Vidal, Ozabeni, Mfabeni, Tewate Wilderness Area, Mkuze Game Reserve, and transfrontier parks. It is part of the Ponta do Ouro-Kosi Bay Transfrontier Conservation Area, a marine park that spans South Africa, Mozambique, and Eswatini, and is included in the larger Greater Lubombo Transfrontier Conservation Area.

Until 1895, Kosi Bay was home to the Tsonga people and their traditional fish kraals. The Tsonga had lived there for over a thousand years, and early Portuguese sailors recorded that this area and lands further south were occupied by them. The region was once known as Tembeland or Thongaland, but that name fell out of use around the early 1900s. It was ruled by a Tsonga branch of the Vahlanganu (Tembe). In the early 1890s, Swiss missionary Reverend Henri-Alexandre Junod conducted a scientific and ethnographic study of the Tsonga people, producing a detailed map that showed the Tsonga Tembe people’s occupation of the bay. His map labelled the area Tembeland and placed the Tembe capital city at St. Lucia bay. By 1906, the Tsonga people occupied land from St. Lucia to Valdezia in the Spelenkon district of the Transvaal province (now Limpopo Province). St. Lucia bay and Maputo Bay were considered one land belonging to the Tsonga people, with Tsonga villages built continuously from St. Lucia bay to Maputo, separated by no natural division. Around St. Lucia, the ruling chief was the Tembe Royal Family; around Maputo, the ruling class was the Maputo royal family, both from the Vahlanganu branch of the Tsonga. The language spoken in and around Maputo and St. Lucia bay (Tembeland) is Ronga, which Junod described not as an independent language but as a dialect of Xitsonga due to its similarity.

St. Lucia was first named in 1554 by survivors of the Portuguese ship Saint Benedict, who called it the River of the Gold Dunes. At that time, only the Tugela River mouth was known as St. Lucia. In 1575, the Tugela River was named Tugela, and on 13 December 1575, the feast day of Saint Lucy, Manuel Peresterello renamed the mouth area Santa Lucia. The British proclaimed St. Lucia a township in 1822. St. Lucia Game Reserve, 30 kilometres north of the town, was proclaimed in 1895. In 1971, St. Lucia Lake and the turtle beaches and coral reefs of Maputaland were listed by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. In December 1999, the park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site at a ceremony where Nelson Mandela was the guest of honour. In 2025, the heritage designation expanded to include Maputo National Park in neighbouring Mozambique.

The park earned its World Heritage status due to its rich biodiversity, unique ecosystems, and natural beauty concentrated in a relatively small area. This diversity stems from a wide variety of ecosystems, including coral reefs, sandy beaches, subtropical dune forests, savannas, and wetlands. Animals found here include elephant, leopard, black and southern white rhino, Cape buffalo, and, in the ocean, whales, dolphins, and marine turtles such as the leatherback and loggerhead. The park also hosts 1,200 crocodiles and 800 hippopotami. In December 2013, after 44 years, African lions were reintroduced to iSimangaliso. Large underwater reefs are home to brightly coloured fish and corals; Sodwana Bay boasts some of the world’s most spectacular coral diversity, and octopus and squid are common. Whale sharks are occasionally sighted. Twenty-four species of bivalve molluscs have been recorded in Lake St. Lucia, which forms a significant part of the park.