Protected areas across the developing world are increasingly incorporating the needs of local rural communities into their management decisions. The African Parks managed Majete Wildlife Reserve (MWR) in the lower Shire valley of southern Malawi is no exception. Through African Parks’ extension department they aim to incorporate the needs of local communities into their management framework in order to maintain support for their conservation activities. A resource use program (RUP) which facilitates sustainable harvesting was implemented to allow community members access to thatching grass inside the reserve, via 8 RUP gates on the perimeter fence. Each RUP gate is opened once annually for 7 days and game scouts are made available to escort community members into the reserve to harvest grass. As a case study, we assessed the 2015 RUP activities at 5 of the 8 RUP gates to determine the number of community members utilising the program, the biomass of grass removed, the variation in grass bundle masses and the distances walked by community members to access the RUP gates. We determined that a total of 2211 community members accessed the reserve via the 5 monitored RUP gates and removed 134 073kg of thatching grass in 2015. Additionally, we found a significant variation in the bundle masses between individual harvesters, as well as the harvesting characteristics at each RUP gate. We also confirmed anecdotal suggestions from the African Parks extension assistants (EAs) that community members’ walk significant distances from their homes to the RUP gates to harvest grass.