South Africa’s First Leadership Programme for Reserve Managers Launched in Mpumalanga
South Africa’s First Leadership Programme for Reserve Managers Launched in Mpumalanga
Eight provincial nature reserves, from Blyde River Canyon to Manyeleti, join a six-month coaching and mentoring programme built to lift management performance on the ground.
Mpumalanga, November 2026
The managers who run eight of Mpumalanga’s provincial nature reserves are going back to school, but not to a classroom. A first-of-its-kind programme in South Africa is putting coaches on the ground in their reserves and pairing each manager with a mentor for six months, with one goal: better-run reserves for some of the country’s most threatened wildlife.
The Transformative Leadership in Conservation (TLC) programme is a partnership between Leadership for Conservation in Africa (LCA), the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA), Shirika and WeWild Africa. The recently launched programme opened with a three-day in-situ workshop at the Gooderson Kloppenheim Country Estate Hotel from 16 to 18 September 2026.
MTPA manages 17 provincial nature reserves across three district municipalities. Together they are home to 85 threatened and 57 endangered species. The agency has set a province-wide target of 67% on the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT), the standard measure of how well a protected area is run. TLC aims to lift each participating reserve’s METT score by 10%.
Rather than a conventional training course, TLC uses two tracks:
- Coaching on the ground: coaches spend time with each Reserve Manager in their reserve, identifying practical improvements one manager at a time.
- Virtual mentoring: mentors work with managers remotely to build leadership and decision-making skills and develop new approaches to each reserve’s challenges.
Progress is measured against METT assessments taken before and after the programme, and against each reserve’s Integrated Management Plan (IMP). That ties leadership development directly to measurable results on the ground.
The eight participating reserves
- Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve
- Manyeleti Nature Reserve
- Mahushe Shongwe Nature Reserve
- Songimvelo Nature Reserve
- Loskop Dam Nature Reserve
- Ohrigstad Nature Reserve
- Verloren Vallei Nature Reserve
- Mkhombo Dam Nature Reserve
“Every great leader, professional, and changemaker has benefited from someone willing to share their experience, challenge their thinking and help them see possibilities they may not have recognised themselves,” says Dereck Milburn, CEO of LCA.
“This intervention is critical for the entity, as we have faced persistent challenges in achieving our Annual Performance Plan targets over the past five years. Beyond improving the METT scores of individual reserves, the programme is an opportunity to strengthen leadership, restore morale and enhance the performance of our Reserve Managers. We want to see this investment translate into better-managed reserves, stronger accountability and tangible improvements in conservation outcomes,” says Ms Nomcebo Kunene, Executive Manager: Biodiversity Conservation at MTPA.
The launch was attended by MTPA Board Member and former SANParks CEO Prof David Mabunda, and Ms Kunene.
MTPA is actively pursuing private partnerships to strengthen its reserves, and TLC is one of the key programmes expected to unlock further investment and capacity. The partners intend the programme to serve as a foundation for scaling, so that provincial conservation agencies across South Africa can adopt the approach.
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