Zululand & the Elephant Coast

Part of the 25° South map series — original reference maps of Africa’s safari regions, free to use with attribution.

Zululand and the Elephant Coast is northern KwaZulu-Natal’s wildlife circuit, and it is unusually mixed. State parks that are among the oldest proclaimed reserves in Africa sit beside private land that has dropped its fences, and beside community-owned reserves on ground returned through land restitution. Eighty-six protected areas in one corner of South Africa, and no one seems to have drawn them as a single sheet before.

The map runs from Vryheid and Babanango in the west to the Indian Ocean, and from the Tugela north to the Mozambican border — Ithala, Hluhluwe-iMfolozi, uMkhuze, Phinda, Manyoni, Thanda, Zimanga, Somkhanda, Tembe and Ndumo among them.

iSimangaliso is drawn as an outline rather than a block because it is not one piece of land. It is a World Heritage Site made up of sections — uMkhuze, Maphelane, Sodwana, Kosi Bay — which is why other reserves appear inside it. Maputo National Park lies across the Mozambican border; the elephants move between it and Tembe, so it is drawn and named even though it is not part of the region.

Reserves shown on this map

86 protected areas, alphabetical. Areas are measured from the mapped boundary and rounded to the nearest square kilometre. Names on the map itself are shortened to keep it legible — the full names are here.

Using this map

This map is free to use — on a website, in a print piece, in a presentation — as long as you credit 25° South and link back to this page. That is the whole licence (CC BY 4.0). You do not need to ask us first.

Notes on accuracy

Areas were cross-checked against reserves’ own published figures where those exist. Most agree within a few per cent; where they do not, we have kept the mapped boundary and said so rather than quietly correcting it.

Two figures are worth flagging. Thula Thula is drawn at 9 km² against a published 4,500 hectares — open data has only its original core, and the land around it now sits inside the neighbouring Zulweni boundary. And Amakhosi does not appear by name: it lies within the area mapped as Kwa Zulu Nature Reserve. In both cases we have drawn what the data actually says rather than adjusting a boundary to match a brochure.

This sheet covers land. iSimangaliso’s marine protected area runs some 60 km out to sea and is not drawn.

Spotted something wrong? Reserve boundaries change and open data has gaps — tell us and we will correct it.