Three-week-long celebrations of the Kruger National Park (KPN) 110th birthday will kick off today. The celebrations will kick-off with an event in Phalaborwa, which will give the communities living in the north region of the park an opportunity to join the celebrations.

Under the theme, KNP: 110 Conservation Celebration, the events aim to showcase the fact that the Kruger National Park is one of the world leaders in conservation after 110 years of successful management.

The KNP traces its origin back to 1898, when President Paul Kruger of the former Transvaal Republic or Zuid-Afrikaanse Republiek (ZAR), set aside what was then called the Sabie Game Reserve for conservation purposes.

The largest game reserve in South Africa, nearly 2 million hectares of land that stretch for 352km (20 000 square km) from north to south, the Kruger National Park lies across the provinces of Mpumalanga and Limpopo in the north of the country, just south of Zimbabwe and west of Mozambique.

A flagship of the country’s national parks, it boasts the Big Five (lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino), the Little Five (buffalo weaver, elephant shrew, leopard tortoise, ant lion and rhino beetle), the birding Big Six (ground hornbill, kori bustard, lappet-faced vulture, martial eagle, pel’s fishing owl and saddle-bill stork) and more species of mammals than any other African Game Reserve.

http://www.sabcnews.com/south_africa/general/0,2172,170300,00.html