Revisiting The 1942 Development Plan

Aquafarming The St Lucia System

The iMfolozi Flood Plains

 #Religion101

The Umfolozi flood plains were reclaimed and sold to the public in 1928 to fund the British Soldiers coming back from WWI..

But that is irrelevant.. In 1718 Sedimentation build up in the St Lucia basin was identified as a reason why the Royal British Navy did not see St Lucia Estuary fit to develop as a harbour..

You see school Geography teaches us Natural Erosion.. this is where rainfall on the mountain and it slides down into the valley to create fertile farmland.. anyway..

St Lucia couldn't function naturally anymore back in 1718

Since God gave dominion over Nature to man more than 8000 years ago.. about 2000 before the Glacier that covered this area melted.. it is only fitting to continue with 1942 Development plan of turning The St Lucia Basin into the biggest man-made Marine Aquaculture in the history of mankind.

If not .. the system will choke to death.. a natural course that these systems undergo.. and become farmland..

My take on this.. a Marine system is much more important than more crops.. cheaper to develop and much more productive in green protein than any other commercial farming operation..

As a freshwater system, it has a limited life span and very little use..

As a marine system, it populates the Tugela Shelve, the sandbank running from South of Durban to Mapelane Bay just South of St Lucia Estuary.

As a marine system, it is a Nursery to 50% of all the marine species of South Africa.

As a Phytoplankton Production Facility, it keeps the only organism alive that mitigate global warming every 48 hours

We cannot turn our back on managing The St Lucia basin as a Marine System and we don't need the Umfolozi flood plain to do it.

It was already silted up in 1718.

Regards

Petrus Viviers

0813427371

PS This massive undertaking can be done through sourcing finance through the sale of beach driving permits.

Does the IWPA have an estuary management plan ?

I have been on the hunt for the current Estuary Management plan for the St. Lucia Estuary in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park,  KZN South Africa, for quite some time now, and am having real difficulty finding this mandated plan within the interwebs.

Sign our petition here

GIVE the 4u2fish campaign a mandate to ensure that the IWPA creates and implements an estuary management plan for the St. Lucia estuary and surrounding waterways

The IWPA or iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority has recently  made seriously nasty changes to their web site, and now one can not locate any documents from within the pages at www.isimangaliso.com  I tried using their search box in the top right hand corner of their pages on a desktop, and was very disappointed. I searched for "estuary management plan " and got a few pages in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page ) which looked like this 


I blog about high end Search Engine Optimisation and online marketing issues from a FUFISM based perspective at 4ubrand.blogspot.com so I am not talking out of my hat, and have a reasonable idea of what a web site should do, and what should be in ones pages from a business perspective.  The IWPA is an international player within the tourism and environmental management spaces, and their current website does not reflect this, but rather shows their disdain and contempt for any serious environmentalist. especially if you are a South African,  where  their total focus is on luring tourists to come  and visit a place that is in serious ecological distress, with neglected infrastructures and  poorly maintained public amenities, then charging real high fees at gate entrances.  Just saying their web site sucks and is not helpful to those doing any kind of pre visit research about the area and what to expect.

Sign our petition here

GIVE the 4u2fish campaign a mandate to ensure that the IWPA creates and implements an estuary management plan for the St. Lucia estuary and surrounding waterways 

Any way I never found any links to their Estuary management plan.  I searched else where and the closest that I came to finding the current St. Lucia Estuary Managment Plan was this link https://sahris.sahra.org.za/sites/default/files/additionaldocs/iSimangaliso%20EstMP%20St%20Lucia%20%28For%20Public%20Review%29_0.pdf in the website for the South African Heritage Resource Agency

when looking over this plan, one will be quite shocked at the minimal detail.  Now the South African Heritage Resource Agency should in my humble opinion be linking out to the latest Estuary Management plans for the iSimangaliso Wetland Park World Heritage site.  The St. Lucia estuary is not the only estuary within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, as there are estuaries at both Kozi Bay and Sodwana Bay as well.  These estuaries should also have estuary management plans in place, as is discussed in the ICMA or Integrated Coastal Management Act ( 2008 ) in chapter 4 --- sections 33 and 34

Sign our petition here

GIVE the 4u2fish campaign a mandate to ensure that the IWPA creates and implements an estuary management plan for the St. Lucia estuary and surrounding waterways 

These estuary management plans should have been developed in terms of the NEMA or National Environmental Management Act, as the Integrated Coastal Management Act is subservient legislation which is supposed to follow the rules, regulations, procedures and related processes as outlined within the NEMA.

Now this is an awful lot of heavy reading, and there are so many extra regulations and related notices that ones mind just simply starts to spin out of control.

Then there are the problems of demarcation relating to local municipalities and their zoning maps.  Zoning maps are the sole mandate of local municipalities, and the IWPA does not actually have the powers to maintain their own zoning maps.  This is a complicated issue, and even the president is obliged to ensure that any special zoning that he requires is processed through the local municipality's IDP  ( Integrated Development Plan ) process and follows the mandated procedures  including the public participation processes mandated in terms of the MSA (Municipal Systems Act ) and related legislation.  This is clear as the Integrated Coastal Management Act specifies this in section 31 where zoning maps are discussed.

Sign our petition here

So there are an awful lot of different acts and  laws and a host of related legislations promulgated under these acts, which makes estuary plans and related record keeping a true nightmare.   So I come back to the original  question, DOES THE IWPA HAVE AN ESTUARY MANAGEMENT PLAN IN PLACE FOR THE ST.  LUCIA ESTUARY ?

GIVE the 4u2fish campaign a mandate to ensure that the IWPA creates and implements an estuary management plan for the St. Lucia estuary and surrounding waterways 

any help in finding an online copy of this mandated document will be appreciated, coz I can not find a link to the St. Lucia Estuary management plan within the online environment.   I have blogged about this before here 

when I visited their offices at the dredger harbour in St. Lucia I was informed that there is an estuary management plan in place and that it is available online.   checking up yesterday and today ( 2 November 2019 )  I WAS UNABLE TO LOCATE THIS ESTUARY MANAGEMENT PLAN within the interwebs.

Sign our petition here

the 4u2fish campaign has taken over the task of getting the right people to look into ensuring that the St. Lucia Estuary becomes  functional and fish-able again. the 4u2fish  campaign has a petition that we need you to sign  here

hashtags for this post

#Frankie2Socks  #4u2fish  #ReviveStLucia #HerstelStLucia #iSimangaliso #wetland #WetlandPark #EstuaryManagement  #IWPA

sugested supplemental reading
4x4ban.blogspot.com
4u2fish.blogspot.com

Frankie2Socks and the 4u2fish canpaign

Frankie2Socks (yours  Truly ) is a concerned citizen and an unwilling environmental activist who really just wants to go fishing, and catch fish

Unfortunately, due to shenanigans and crooked folks working for the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority, who have since been transfered (with promotions ) and now have greater influence over the poor management of lake St. Lucia, than they had as management staff at the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority, we are now obliged to take actions and implement activities that will put pressure on our current government to come to the party and help the Local folks on the ground to revive lake St. Lucia and restore the biological functionality of lake St. Lucia and restore our collective economic strengths that came from the prawns, fish and other renewable resources that Lake St. Lucia provided in the past.

the 4u2fish team have numerous platforms and social media profiles in place to supply information and give support to folks who are willing to take up specific issues with the local municipality and other relevant authorities.  

My personal blog at frankie2socks.blogspot.com is also part of this network of interconnected marketing touch points  

Info4u is our official marketing partner, and they run a community outreach blog at 4ubrand.blogspot.com which discusses the FUFISM marketing philosophy and related online marketing tactics that our collective efforts will need to encompass for best results within online search and connected SERP's, be it internal within social media platforms or external such as at BING DICK DUCK GO or GOOGLE

4u2fish.blogspot.com is our official blog which has an official facebook support page at facebook.com/4u2fish 

problems are plenty and answers from those who should be managing our affairs do not make sense, coz all management has been usurped by the  iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority, who do as they please and refuse to be held accountable for their rather nasty economic impacts within the Umkhanyakude District municipality and the four separate local municipalities 

• Big 5 Hlabisa Local Municipality
• Jozini Local Municipality
• Mtubatuba Local Municipality
• uMhlabuyalingana Local Municipality

MDB code: DC27  The uMkhanyakude District Municipality is a Category C municipality located along the coast in the far north of the KwaZulu-Natal Province. It shares its borders with Swaziland and Mozambique, as well as with the districts of Zululand and King Cetshwayo. It is the second-largest district in the province, and consists of the following four local municipalities: uMhlabuyalingana, Jozini, Big 5 Hlabisa and Mtubatuba. 

 ‘uMkhanyakude' refers to the Acacia Xanthophloea fever tree and means ‘that shows light from afar'., which reffers to the natural colour of the fever  tree, which sticks out like a hound dogs balls, and cant be missed in the bush. The name reflects both the uniqueness of its people and their hospitality, as well as the biodiversity and conservation history that the region is very proud of. The Isimangaliso Wetland Park, formerly Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, encompasses the entire coastline of the Umkhanyakude district Municipality, which has the brand name ELEPHANT COAST and was referred to in the past as the Maputuland Coast.

the #ReviveStLucia campaign and the 4u2fish campaign are working together with many others to get the folks on the ground active, attentive and ready to attend public participation process meetings.where our  collective future is discussed.   

Will they be mining the lake and its connected waterways? 

now this is a very hot topic, and it is a rather emotional one for many.  this question will be discussed at great length in future posts here in this blog, as well as in related blogs and face book profiles for the many separate entities, juristic folks, as well as natural folks  like you and I.   So this space will soon be active and buzzing with many diverse and strange views on the topics connected to both mining and rehabiltating the whole area from Cape St. Lucia light house in the South to the Mozambique border in the north  and inland all the way to the N2. or the iSimangaliso Wetland Park and surrounding rural areas of Umkhanyakude.

Join the conversation subscribe to this blog, or any of the related blogs and leave your comments, points of view and suggestions.

#Frankie2Socks as a #guestblogger for the #ReviveStLucia campaign #4u2fish