LUSAKA: Africa’s wild animals have never paid much attention to the continent’s often arbitrary borders.

Soon the tourists who watch them won’t have to either.

Trans-national conservation areas with relaxed or no borders are a blossoming project for conservation in southern Africa, where neighbour states have formally agreed to set up seven cross-border wildlife sites, and have 15 more in the works.

Those pressing for their creation say they will allow animals freer movement and encourage tourism, and that the parks are also valuable exercises in regional cooperation.

“African borders were all determined arbitrarily by European colonial powers, irrespective of existing ethnic groups,” said Willem van Riet, head of South Africa’s Peace Parks Foundation.

“Those boundaries have nothing to do with ecology.”

Van Riet’s group facilitates the development of cross-border conservation, and has the backing of peacemaker and former South African president Nelson Mandela.

The issue will be big on the agenda at next month’s World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa — where the future of the world’s parks, nature reserves and other protected areas will be under the spotlight from September 8-17.

Three days will be devoted to trans-frontier conservation areas at the meeting, Van Riet said.

TOURIST RANGES: Aside from the issue of the borders themselves, expanding the size of the individual parks by running them into one another increases the foraging and migration ranges of the animals and the attraction to tourists.