Sodwana Bay National Park offers Africa's Southern most, Coral Reefs and outstanding Climate. Sodwana Bay is one of the World's premier sport diving destinations. This South African Nature Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal features various popular dive sites with a great diversity of underwater seascapes, marine flora and fauna, corals, beautiful overhangs, drop-offs and mushroom rocks. Spectacular night dives have made this a not-to-be-missed destination for the scuba diving enthusiast. Sodwana Bay National Park is situated within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park.
This iSimangaliso Wetland Park was South Africa’s first World Heritage Site, recognized for its superlative natural beauty, ecological processes and biodiversity covers 3320 Square Kilometers and includes a Coastline of 230 km! Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife is the Provincial Agency mandated to carry out biodiversity Conservation and associated activities in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal. The primary focus of the organisation is biodiversity Conservation - the management of more than 120 protected Areas which include two World Heritage Sites which are the Maloti-Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site and the Isimangaliso Wetland Park, World Heritage Site.
The Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife administration model has been shown to work well whereby the eco-tourism operations provide financial support for conservation operations. Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife’s (Ezemvelo) mandate is derived from the KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Management Act (Act No.9 of 1997), which is to direct the management of Nature conservation within the Province including Protected Areas. This includes the development and promotion of ecotourism facilities within the Protected Areas. With its headquarters at Queen Elizabeth Park in Pietermaritzburg, the Provincial Capital, Ezemvelo manages more than 120 Protected Areas and is the leader in sustainable biodiversity conservation. It has recently broadened its focus to become more relevant to communities living adjacent to their Parks - primarily through job creation and sustainable natural resource harvesting. The organisation as a whole is the offspring of a merger between two conservation bodies: the former Natal Parks Board which was formed in 1947 and whose antecedents go back into colonial times; and the former KwaZulu Directorate of Nature Conservation which was formed in 1972 to manage the nature conservation requirements of the "Homeland" of KwaZulu. Following the Democratic elections in 1994 both organisations negotiated a mutual amalgamation which resulted in the formation of the KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Board, with its entire operation conducted as KwaZulu-Natal Conservation Services.