iSimangaliso Wetland Park – Maputo National Park

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Transboundary Conservation: iSimangaliso Wetland Park - Maputo National Park

The iSimangaliso Wetland Park - Maputo National Park (ISWP-MNP) is a unique transboundary protected area that straddles the border between South Africa and Mozambique. Established in 1999, this expansive conservation region encompasses a variety of ecosystems, including terrestrial, coastal, and marine environments, making it a haven for nearly 5,000 species.

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UNESCO Description of the World Heritage Site

The iSimangaliso Wetland Park – Maputo National Park is a transboundary extension to South Africa’s iSimangaliso Wetland Park, inscribed in 1999. It includes terrestrial, coastal, and marine ecosystems, and is home to nearly 5,000 species. The site complements iSimangaliso’s conservation values, enhancing biodiversity protection across the Maputaland ecoregion. It features diverse habitats, including lakes, lagoons, mangroves, and coral reefs. The park lies within the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany Hotspot, reflecting high endemism and ongoing natural processes, and underscores long-standing regional conservation cooperation.

UNESCO Justification of the World Heritage Site

Criterion (vii): iSimangaliso Wetland Park – Maputo National Park includes a diverse mosaic of terrestrial, coastal and marine land and seascapes of exceptional beauty, with superlative scenic vistas along its coastline. From the clear waters of the Indian Ocean punctuated by colourful coral reefs to wide intact sandy beaches, a forested cordon of dunes and a network of wetlands, grasslands, estuarine systems, forests, freshwater lakes, mangroves, seagrass beds, coral reefs and savannah, the property has a richly textured landscape and exceptional aesthetic qualities. Outstanding natural phenomena include the shifting salinity status within Lake St. Lucia linked to wet and dry climatic cycles, the spectacle of large numbers of nesting turtles on the beaches and the abundance of marine megafauna including dolphins and migrating whales and Whale Shark and the large aggregations of waterfowl and large breeding colonies of pelicans, storks, herons and terns and the site’s contribution to the East Asia-East Africa global flyway for migratory birds along the east coast of Africa.

Criterion (ix): The combination of fluvial, marine and aeolian processes in iSimangaliso Wetland Park – Maputo National Park has resulted in a variety of landforms. The property’s transitional geographic location between sub-tropical and tropical Africa, as well as its coastal setting, have resulted in significant species and ecosystem diversity, including freshwater lakes and coastal lagoons, mangroves, seagrass meadows, and dunes. Speciation processes in the larger Maputaland Centre of Endemism, which this property sits within, are also ongoing and contribute another element to the diversity and interplay of evolutionary processes at work in the property. In the marine components of the site, the sediments being transported by the Agulhas Current are trapped by submarine canyons on the continental shelf allowing for remarkably clear waters for the development of coral reefs. The interplay of this diverse environmental processes is further marked by major floods and coastal storms.

Criterion (x): The extensive range of interconnected habitats across terrestrial, coastal and marine areas within the property support a significant diversity of African biota, including numerous threatened and endemic species of flora and fauna. The species recorded for iSimangaliso are extensive, and population sizes for most of them remain viable. The over 6,500 plant and animal (including 521 bird) species recorded in iSimangaliso Wetland Park include 11 species endemic to the protected area, 108 species endemic to South Africa, and 467 species listed as threatened in South Africa. Of the 4,935 species recorded in Maputo National Park at the time of the extension, 104 are assessed as threatened or near threatened according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened species, and 184 are endemic or near endemic to Mozambique (5), southern Africa (95) and the Western Indian Ocean (135). Notably, the vulnerable Loggerhead Turtle and Leatherback Turtle nest along the property’s coastal dunes and sandy beaches, making it the second most important nesting site in the Indian Ocean. The extensive and diverse seagrass meadows in the waters of Inhaca Island’s western shores in Maputo National Park, including vulnerable species such as Cape Dwarf-Eelgrass, shelter the last remaining Dugong population of Maputo Bay.

Encyclopedia Record: Maputo National Park

Maputo National Park is a national park in Mozambique, located on Maputo Bay, approximately 100 kilometers southeast of the city of Maputo. With an area of 1,718 km2, it is part of Matutuíne District of the Maputo Province, and also of the Inhaca Island of the city of Maputo.

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IUCN World Heritage Outlook

The 2025 Conservation Outlook on iSimangaliso Wetland Park reports the following assessment:

Source: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) · View assessment