Our greatest threat

[iNdlovu]

My pearls of wisdom for this morning.....
The greatest threat to our wildlife and wilderness areas is not the obvious: Poaching, trade in ivory or rhino horn, speeding in parks etc, it is rather SanParks' commercialisation programme which will become the slow silent killer of our natural places.

[Lisbeth]

My pearls of wisdom for this morning.....
The greatest threat to our wildlife and wilderness areas is not the obvious: Poaching, trade in ivory or rhino horn, speeding in parks etc, it is rather SanParks' commercialisation programme which will become the slow silent killer of our natural places.

iNdlovu..That's exactly it....the other stuff contributes about 5% in total of the ultimate total destruction of places like Kruger...but this NON ESSENTIAL commercialisation and paving of Kruger is very similar to this arms deal fiasco IMO..where questions are being asked did we in fact get the right stuff, Did we need to buy arms at all and the stuff we did get was that possibly chosen because of the biggest bribe on offer (Bell Helicopters pulled out because of being asked to uhmm put something into this brown envelope. It will all come out in the Inquiry hastily agreed to 10 years after the fact

So too I believe there will be an enquiry into this non conservationist Commercialisation of Kruger in about 20 years time long after Kruger is a glorified zoo/Safari Park viewing groups of animals in enclosures at best..What chance has Southern Africa's wildlife got anyway..I heard today that the Chinese Miners are poisoning Wild Life heavily in the Zambezi Valley and Hwange..poisoning waterholes and killing everything that drinks at these pools..A herd of Ellies, 10 lion and a few buff were mentioned

In the light of this thread I was flabbergasted to read this opinion on the Sanparks forum , fortunately the response so far has been against it .


I have copied & pasted it :

"I have read some of the inputs and would like to reflect my personal views on this, which are not necessarily those of SANParks. All the years there have been the rules and regulations trying to manage peoples behaviour in the parks and camps - no balls, no bicycles, no playing, no games, etc. I believe we have moved on and need to a more tolerant service provider, especially for children, who are future decision-makers and park visitors. What do we currently offer children? Nothing, at all, just all these rules! I believe we should relook the rules and provide better facilities for people to be able ti cycle, for example a cycling route in or adjacent to camps. I agree there should be control and bicycles should not be on the busier routes in camps where there is a safety risk and neither should kids be allowed to irritate guests in campsites, etc. As with everything there is a responsibility on cyclists (and parents of young cyclists) to behave responsibly. We need dedicated areas for kids to play, to be able to skateboard and be able to cycle. Any views on my suggestion?"

Well said, iNd. Our greatest threat is .... ourselves. Humans that will not stop to exploit and abuse nature and our natural resources. Ever growing population, ever growing demand for money, greed, you name it. Custodians not custoding, but developing.


Very sad to hear about the poisoning of animals. And too. Please share more detail if you have it.


PB, how about the submarines? http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsub/20101123.aspx

Yet our Government cuts back on essential services and conservation?


Serval, I was very shocked too. See the Bicycle Thread elsewhere.

iNdlovu

It makes me so angry and sad that those people who we trust to conserve nature don't see the way they heading with their decision making process.

iNdlovu

It makes me so angry and sad that those people who we trust to conserve nature don't see the way they heading with their decision making process.

BGS, it is hard to understand. All I can think is that they do know what damage they are doing, but greed is in control. I fully understand that SanParks have some difficult issues to contend with
- Reduction in Govt support
- Managing the very touchy subject of land claims and trying to appease those that are waiting for compensation
- The need to get the entire cross section of our population to feel they are welcome in the parks
- To somehow let the population living on the parks' borders to feel they are benefiting financialy from our parks' existence

But I ask, with tears in my eyes, what the hell is a holiday resort inside the park going to do to address the above except to benefit a few shareholders financialy and a very small percentage paid to the community (if there's a profit, which I doubt).
What are the mines in Mapungubwe and possibly Malelane going to do except make shareholders (who are not the general population living on the fringes) richer.
What is logging age old trees going to do for the general population living on the fringes of the Garden Route Park except make the company that won the tender, richer.

It is the duty of the government to ensure that our heritage remains intact, they cannot pass the buck to SanParks who's mandate it is to manage our parks, nothing more - nothing less, and then approve these hairbrained schemes to commercialise the parks.

According to the Auditor General the Mpumalanga Provincial government alone has squandered, mismanaged, misappropriated billions of rands of tax payers money in 2010 and they are not alone, but just the amount lost from one small provincial government could do a lot to address the sticky problems hovering over our parks.
I'm getting riled up, so I had better end this here.