 The management structures of the nature reserves in the Eastern Cape have grown out of the land tenure agreements of the post-apartheid era. These agreements were intended to recognize the rights of local Poza communities to their land while also ensuring a role for the government in stewardship of natural resources. The first such arrangement occurred in the Duesa Quebe Nature Reserve. There are seven different communities surrounding the reserve. In this arrangement, two members from each community are elected as representatives to a council that works with the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency to manage the reserve. The land is officially owned by the community, but it is jointly managed by the Parks Board and the communities. The Parks Board hires community liaisons to work with the communities to strengthen the partnership. The challenge of the community-government partnerships include the representation and balancing of the different community needs. You are responsible for the communities agreeing and making decisions together. So, how do you manage the different goals? Each of the communities has its own wishes and goals, and they don't always agree. You have to go to each community's CPA and say, what do you want? How can we help you? Number one, number two, number three, and all that. And then you have to find a way to help them all? Or one at a time? Or how does that work? Well, do whatever has been read upon. If we come to negotiations with the parks, because we as the elected members have got to negotiate with the leaders of the nature reserve, which is where we are now. And then what happens? The leaders here have, we want this, and then each CPA says, no, we want this. What happens now, as I have said, these two members, these two trustees, we call them trustees, but are forming up that legal entity of the SQA-Berlin Trust. Then these two members, they are the ones that are supposed to go to their respective CPAs and report what has been agreed upon, and report back to the CMC if their communities are not feeling happy about the decision that has been taken. So these two have got to sit in the government management committee, and then they must go and sit in the task committee. Then from there, they must spread that information to their CPAs. Then they must come back and report to the trust that they were not happy. Certainly they're coming back to the CMC to say that we at that CPA, we are feeling that the decision that has been taken is not the right one. It's not helping us. Then it's not going to happen. We think that the decision must be disinterested. Among the seven communities, two are on one side of a large river ravine, and five are on the other. Though all are causa, these communities have unique cultural practices and norms and different relationships to natural resources in the area. For example, marine resources and access to coastal areas play a greater role in some communities than others. Another challenge is ensuring long-term financial stability of the natural reserves. The land claim agreement resulted in a one-time payment to the communities with small animal payments from the reserve hotel and rental properties. In this financial structure and with limited tourism capacity of the reserves, there are few financial incentives for the communities to invest in park and tourism management. We said what would make them all to understand that there was really money that was given back to the communities by the government. The first priority would be a community hold to all these seven CPAs. Then they identified some of the projects that they needed to happen in their areas, but thus we could not just rush into them until these community holds where we were talking about had been finished. And then later we would see if what is the next one that can be taken out. Finally, given threats from poaching and over-harvesting, access to the reserve is limited, fostering tension among stakeholders. Further north from Duesa Trebe is another reserve called Umkobati. This reserve is also co-managed between the communities and the parks board. Yet the agreement was developed later than in Duesa Trebe and has a few significant differences. Perhaps most significant is that the land claim provides for a more consistent annual revenue stream to the communities from any tourism in the reserve. Whereas the annual return to Duesa Trebe communities is a fixed amount based on rental fees to the hotels and rental properties, the annual return to the communities in Umkobati is a percentage of the tourism income. This provides incentives to increase tourism in the area. In addition, access to natural resources is somewhat more fluid with greater opportunity for limited resource use, educational activities and job training activities. Neither management structure is perfect and both represent land management experiments for involving communities into resource management and resource decision making. They offer a fundamental opportunity to explore the sustainability of socio-ecological systems.