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.
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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.
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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
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| 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
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.
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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.
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| 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
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