Africa Wild

Mel that has nothing to do with the intent to trash the Park!!

I used to go in PRIME tourist season in April in the mid 80s when my boys were pre school and camp at Nossob for 3 weeks and not have anybody in camp ...huts or camping...just Gus Mills and his 2 similar aged boys and some bushman kids for my kids to play with ...We had the whole place to ourselves year after year..

Cool for you Peter, but not great as an argument against development. As grounds for objection It has no chance of being heard by anyone in authority.

One has a better chance of effective opposition if one concentrates on issues of sustainable utilisation, and CUMULATIVE impacts on infrastructure and ecology. You cannot stop development, but you can influence development to take account of issues like sustainable utilisation and environmental appropriateness based on scientific measurement of impacts and natural capacity.

Opposition based on emotional and subjective values must be made with extreme eloquence (and restraint) to have any chance of being heard. We can only work with the world we are given to work with.

Mel that has nothing to do with the intent to trash the Park!!

SANparks intent is to maximise exploitation of commercial opportunities. If the resource is trashed in the process, that is a function of bad decision making process and strategy, ignorance, and perhaps mis-application of core mandate, not because of intent. rather than with unprovable allegation, you might achieve more if you focussed on demonstrating with rational arguments why and how a particular development (and its strategy) and its cumulative erosional effect is unsustainable and will impact negatively on the system ecology and the general infrastructure.

just a thought.

Wolf, that is not just a thought, it is a clear and quite brilliant exposure of the situation and the way to face/fight it

Mel wrote:
What kind of revenue did KTP have back then? Purely government funded?

For most of its existence KTP as well as most SANParks has been subsidised by Kruger's tourism!

The subsidy in the old days basically ensured that any shortfalls were covered, and there was never a panic regarding payment of salaries, veterinary operations, research, etc.

Small donor camps/guesthouses were one way of expanding in Kruger without troubling the budget, while the last big camps like Berg&Dal and Mopane were budgeted for properly. Money was never a major issue, and Companies were only too glad to get involved.

Peter Betts wrote:Mel that has nothing to do with the intent to trash the Park!!

I was asking because I don't / didn't know and was wondering how KTP survived in the old days.

Thanks, RP for the explanation and Wolf for putting it into perspective.

The last 60 km section completed around 2008/9? did play a big role in getting more to KTP, but together with that, media marketing through magazine like Weg! Go! Drive Out and Getaway to name a few, more people got to know about this park and came to visit.

We are a bit off the topic, but if you don't mind and want to add on why I feel the park do not need any promotion any more or more lodges. 10 Years ago the park had the capacity to accommodate more visitors, but any increase now will not only have an impact on your experience as vistors following a lion for more than an hour on your own, but more on the resources like water, places to dispose of rubbish and sewage and infrastructure. These problems are already present during peak seasons and even if you can stand the bad roads during these periods do not forget the impact on animals. The worser the road get the faster people will drive resulting in near miss collision or accident and not to talk about animals. I have seen dead squirrels and snakes on my trip while other have seen an ostrich limbing. Its not as bad as the statistics at Kruger, but give it more time and it will not be fun, besides passing guys on bicycles.

Now back to the good old days. The park was definitely not paradise back then and the rangers also had their hands full with coyboys and illegial hunters. Mata-Mata border post was opened in the 70's - 80's and a time restriction had to be implemented on the time you took to drive from Mata-Mata to Twee Rivieren I think it was 2 hours, but for some they could include a braai at Kamqua and still finish just over 2 hours.

In those days the visitor numbers were less and the imapct not that big, but with the high demand the park need to rethink if the extra number of visitors are worthwhile on the long run.

Are they still actively looking at holding this IDIOTIC event

They would be Peter, for the simple reason and in line with
commercial strategy, there is a buck to be made there and
the bottomless pit still holds some "shining value",......

As far as I understood this is definitely going to be happen in September.

Oh ! No !