Welcome to our conservancy!

Welcome to the Lower Mpushini Valley Conservancy's own website!

 For many years the landowners in the Lower Mpushini Valley have been actively involved in conserving their precious natural environment. In order to formalise this the Lower Mpushini Valley Conservancy was formed and registered with Ezimvelo KZN Wildlife.

The conservancy is situated to the east of the National Road N3 freeway and can be reached by turning off at the Ashburton intersection 10km South of Pietermaritzburg.  The valley is approximately 7km from the intersection.

The Lower Mpushini Valley consists of fairly steep hillsides sloping down into the many drainage ravines that flow into the Mpushini and Msunduzi Rivers. These are tributories of the Msunduzi River.  The terrain is fairly rugged and the vegetation ranges from fairly dense valley bushveld in the valleys, through thicket bushveld on the upper slopes and savanna grasslands higher up. In some areas the vegetation consists almost exclusively of acacia thorn trees. These are the pioneer species which provide shelter for the secondary and tertiary tree species which eventually replace them as they die off after they have served their fairly short lifespan. Typical lifespan of acacia species vary from 15 to 30 years.

There is a tremendous biodiversity of plant, animal, bird and invertebrate species in the area and we are now in the process of trying to have most of the conservancy officially proclaimed as a “Protected Environment” in terms of the National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act, No. 57 of 2003. This will ensure that the area is protected from the get-rich schemes of property developments that are threatening the very existence of our natural areas. One of the proposed high density housing developments that are threatening the area include the Pinnacle Point development on the farm Belleview consisting of 5500 houses on 500Ha! If you would like to get more information on these and other developments please visit the PMMB Trust’s website at www.pmmbtrust.org.