iSimangaliso Wetland Park
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. How many people have stood at a site or want to go will be shown once enough people use the app.
Seals, your want-to-go list and the year you stood here are kept in the iPhone app.
How it came to be
iSimangaliso Wetland Park stretches for 280 km along the east coast of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Coral reefs, beaches, dunes, lakes, swamps, mangroves and seagrass beds lie side by side, and loggerhead and leatherback turtles nest on its shores.
In 1895 the St. Lucia Game Reserve was proclaimed 30 km north of the town of St. Lucia. In 1971 Lake St. Lucia and the turtle beaches and coral reefs of Maputaland were listed under the Ramsar Convention on wetlands. In December 1999 the inscription was marked at a ceremony with Nelson Mandela as guest of honour.
The park was known as the Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park until 1 November 2007, when it was renamed iSimangaliso, Zulu for a miracle. In 2025 Maputo National Park in neighbouring Mozambique was added, making it a cross-border property of 397,403 ha.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).