The southern African director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) Jason Bell-Leask said the plan to create a new hunting area is an issue of "grave concern".

"This cannot be disguised as anything but a green light for hunting in the KNP, which makes no ecological, biological, ethical or economic sense," Bell-Leask said. "Kruger animals will be hunted if this deal, in its current form, proceeds".

Legalised trophy hunting in provincial and private reserves that share unfenced boundaries with Kruger has intensified in the past year, with two new concessions being opened in the Makuya and Mthimkulu provincial parks in Limpopo.

The exclusive Associated Private Nature Reserves (Timbavati, Klaserie, Umbabat and Balule), which are part of the Greater Kruger National Park, were also in 2008/2009 granted their highest ever elephant and buffalo trophy quotas.

To create the new hunting area, which lies north of Phalaborwa between the Klein Letaba and Shingwidzi Rivers, SANParks will have to move the existing boundary fence, much of which has recently been upgraded at a cost of R270 000 a kilometre, about 3km to the west.

A new fence, which must be able to contain elephant, is likely to cost considerably more to build than the existing fence.

The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries also warned last week that relocating the existing fence, for which it is responsible, would be very expensive and has serious veterinary disease implications for stock farmers in the region. The depatrment said creation of the hunting area, which will be managed in conjunction with local communities as a contract park, will require moving all the 15 000 community-owned cattle that currently live in the area.

It is also likely to increase conflict between predators and livestock as the new fence will be erected close to the villages of Hlomela, Muyexe and Mahlati, which are 2-3km from the Kruger boundary.

Responding in writing to question submitted by The Sunday Independent, Dr Hector Magome, managing executive of conservation services at SANParks, said that permitting hunting in provincial, private or contract parks that share unfenced boundaries with Kruger falls within the concept of sustainable use of natural resources and was permissible in terms of the Protected Areas Act and the Kruger management plan.

"This area has a low tourism or agricultural potential," said. "Sustainable use of resources is currently the best option as it benefits communities most and has the lowest impact on the environment."

Although there is very little game in the area, he said "(wild) animals will re-colonise the area over time as their populations grow."

Magome added that although veterinary laws prohibit cattle and wild animals, particularly buffalo, intermingling in the Greater Kruger, SANParks was contemplating allowing this in the proposed hunting area, which is currently used as a communal grazing area.

"We hope future laws will include the possibility to have both domestic and wild animals in the same area as in many other parts of Africa," he said, adding that negotiations with local communities on this issue were still under way.

Leader of the UDM Bantu Holomisa said the concept of sustainable use of natural resources needed to be publicly debated.

"The whole issue of what is meant by sustainable use of resources in national parks needs to be unpacked and re-examined and SANParks need to explain this clearly to the parliamentary portfolio committee on environmental affairs and other stakeholders," Holomisa said. "It is a pity that they seem to be advocating mowing down animals rather than conserving them."

Ifaw's Bell-Leask also called for the interpretation of sustainable use of natural resources to be debated.

"It seems to me that SANParks has decided that sustainable use means consumptive use, a very short-sighted view of the world indeed. SANParks can try and twist things this way and that to mislead the public but at the end of the day, the intent is clear - Kruger animals will be hunted if this deal, in its current form, proceeds," Bell-Leask said.

The Kruger National Park is increasingly becoming surrounded by hunting concessions that share a common boundary with the park, which in 2007 attracted 1.39 million tourists.

In addition to the hunting that takes place within South Africa, a new hunting concession offering elephant, buffalo and lion trophies has been opened in Mozambique on the south-eastern border of Kruger.

The chief communications officer at the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Pricilla Sehoole said last week that under current laws all cattle in the proposed contract park would have to be removed if the existing fence was moved westward.

"Considering current levels of human-wildlife conflict next to Kruger Park, it is hard to imagine that this Utopia of cattle and wildlife intermingling can be proposed," Sehoole said.

"Bringing the fences right next to the villages will in fact reduce the (disease) conflict buffer zone and increase conflict (between wildlife and communities)."