Pop-up camp to open in Kruger National Park

Information & Discussion on Other Development Plans for Kruger
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Richprins
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Re: Pop-up camp to open in Kruger National Park

Post by Richprins »

Philip, you must toughen up and follow through relentlessly telephonically with media until you find a sympathetic ear! It is difficult but failure is not an option on Africa Wild! :twisted:


Kruger does regular media schmooze events whenever a new development is on the horizon...they are not stupid. ;-)


Please check Needs Attention pre-booking: https://africawild-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=322&t=596
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Re: Pop-up camp to open in Kruger National Park

Post by Lisbeth »

CONCERNED SANPARKS STAKEHOLDERS Facebook group:

Rouen Heiberg Snr
6 hrs
17/7/19
Feedback from Mr James Lorimer the DA Shadow Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries.
"Early days yet, but |I managed to insert the issue into a speech last week in the debate on the budget vote for the Environment Department. The Minister has taken note of my speech and called her staff for a copy of the text just this morning. I intend to follow it up with a written parliamentary question about the tender and how it was issued and why it was issued to Thebe. I realise this is only part of the issue, and that the other part is about the over-commercialisation of the Park. That is something I intend to look at in the longer term.”
Remark: The abovementioned issue is the Selati Bridge Development. See speech.

SPEECH FOR DELIVERY IN THE ENVIRONMENT EPC
11TH JULY 2019
BY JAMES LORIMER
There are some things we expect from this portfolio. First, it must work out how South Africa’s environmental resource can be harnessed in the best way to provide a path out of poverty for as many of our people as possible. Use of the environment must be sustainable or it is pointless. Government must ensure that in climbing out of poverty, we do not create a wasteland that is unhealthy or not worth living in. Unique aspects of our environmental legacy are a birthright that our citizens should have an opportunity to experience.

Money allocated for these tasks should be well spent. A first look at the department charged with these tasks shows a decidedly mixed bag. I understand that it is natural in presenting a report for any department to want to play down its failures, but the absence of the word “adverse” in relation to its audit findings from the department’s report to last week’s committee meetings was amateurish and has presented a credibility problem that will endure.

What was strange was the ANC’s muted reaction to this. This is billions of Rands of the people’s money,
the department missed the deadline to submit its figures the AG doesn’t know where the money went.

This is not a smallanyana mistake, this is a big deal!

Mumbled explanations about a change in accounting practices do not hide the vast amounts of money cannot be properly accounted for. This amounts to managerial incompetence on a massive scale.

If we can’t trust the department to be straight with parliament as it conducts oversight it will cast doubt on everything the department does. Corruption is powered by graft, encouraged by a lack of consequences and enabled by mismanagement. This must be cleaned up, and quickly.
If you want start to tackle corruption you need look no further than the award of a South African National Parks tender to Thebe Tourism for the Selati Railway Bridge hotel development at Skukuza in the Kruger National Park.

In case anybody needs reminding, Thebe Tourism is a subsidiary of Thebe Investments of which the largest shareholder at almost 50% is the Batho Batho trust. The sole beneficiary of the Trust is the African National Congress.

So here you have the ANC government run entity of SANPARKS giving a tender to itself! If that’s not criminal behaviour it should be. At the very least it is unethical. The officials involved in the award of this tender should be investigated and disciplined. It you do this, it shows yo9u’re not serious about oversight.

If the Minister is truly concerned with outing the rot in the entities in her new department, she should introduce lifestyle audits of officials and follow-through investigations of those who have unexplained wealth. It doesn’t have to be everybody but a random audit of a number of officials every month would encourage good behaviour.

In his state of the nation speech the President put forward the ambitious plan of doubling our tourism in the next eleven years. It is a laudable aim and speaks directly to an area where this department can most impact our unemployment crisis. If we are to receive tourists, many of whom will come to view our rich wildlife heritage, we will need to expand the land area that is allocated to protected conservation areas. We will be urging the authorities to focus on this as a major goal.

There are many areas of the country that have the potential to be declared national parks or to be conservancies, some of them privately owned, that could be integrated with our national park system to create large areas where biodiversity can be enhanced and protected.

It is going to be important when we do this to ensure that areas designated for preservation are not degraded by other activities. To this end, I believe we should be looking at legislation that ensures a barrier zone that will keep activities like mining away from the direct boundaries of our parks. A case in point is the proposal for a giant coal mine directly on the southern border of the Kruger national Park. This is an area which provides major tourism earnings which would be destroyed if the noise and dust of an open pit were recklessly permitted. Barrier zone legislation, that specifies exact exclusion zones around exactly which protected areas will provide a degree of legislative certainty for prospective miners that is currently missing.

There another anomaly in our mining licencing process where the mining department is also the authorising authority on environmental permits for mines. The Department of Mineral Resources or DME as it is now, does not have the expertise or the capacity to properly perform this function and it should be carried out by the people who can do it, the Department of the Environment as is the case of the majority of mining jurisdictions worldwide.

Mining has left a historic legacy of environmental damage. When things go wrong, as with the disgraceful official neglect of the bad operational practices at Mintails on the West Rand, the environmental authorities should be empowered and capacitated to act. The business rescure practitioners have no duty to account for environmental damage. In the end the liability will become the problem of the environmental authority. Efforts to amend rules covering this situation should be fast tracked.

South Africa’s natural heritage is an asset that belongs to all our people. When a rhino is poached from a national park, it is an asset that belongs to all of us that is being stolen. Are we winning the battle against rhino poaching? The official word is that poaching is down but it is unclear how much of this reduction is due to improved law enforcement or poverty relief programmes. There is the disquieting thought that rhino poaching is down because there are simply fewer rhino to be found in our national parks.

It is time for the department to be transparent on this issue. We need to know how many rhino are left in our national parks and whether their numbers are growing or shrinking. If they are shrinking then the department needs to come up with a new plan that works to preserve the future of rhinos. There are other forms of wildlife trafficking too, which need to be given more attention than they are currently getting.

These are just a few of the big issues that confront our environment. My colleagues will focus on others. These issues need to be addressed and the place to start is in ensuring an honest and capable department. Until that happens, chances of success are remote.


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
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