This bracing and beautiful mountain wilderness, interspersed with the gentle valleys and grassy plains of the Little Karoo, has been described as South Africa’s most scenic national parks. Mountain Zebra Park is also the setting of one of the miracles of conservation – the rescue from extinction of one of the world’s most endangered species, the Cape mountain zebra. Mountain Zebra Park is set in the magnificent, mountainous Karoo country near the town of Craddock in the Eastern Cape, and sized at 6 536-ha. In addition to the Cape mountain zebra, the park has herds of several other species of large game such as eland, red hartebeest, kudu and black wildebeest. At least 200 bird species have been identified so far.There is also a three-day, two-night hiking trail which rates as one of the finest in South Africa. The new rest camp facilities at Mountain Zebra Park have been in use for more than 10 years.
Lying across a plateau just 25km south of-west of Cradock the Mountain Zebra National park is typical of the Eastern Cape’s Karoo country, with a colourful variety of such local plant species as Karoo aster, globe Karoo and Koggelmandervoetkaroo. Here the aloe- and bush-covered mountains roll down to valleys where acacia, wild olive and white stinkwood spring up between the short-tufted grasslands.
One particular aspect of the Mountain Zebra National Park that will immediately strike you as the visitor is the concentration of game on the area known as the Rooiplaat Plateau around the curves of one of the game-viewing roads. At any given moment about 85 per cent of the large herbivores in the park will be found here, the reason being that Rooiplaat consists of sweet grassveld which the grazers prefer to the sour grasses and Karoo scrub covering most of the rest of the park. This occurs because the park is not divided into ‘camps’ and the animals roam freely where they choose. |
