Breaking boundaries
In this part of the world, we love visitors: they’re a spark to the entrepreneurial spirit that burns so brightly here. And a big plus for Sunshine Coast residents is that the extra fixing up, planning and resourcing done in preparation for the holiday season influx benefits residents throughout the year.
We share in this edition the municipality’s safety and general management plans for Ndlambe’s coastal towns over the next few weeks.
In November, Ndlambe was informed that the Eastern Cape coastline as far as the Fish River, as well as the Western Cape, had been declared a national state of disaster. This is good news for the Sunshine Coast because it opens a pathway for funding to repair infrastructure damaged by the high seas event in September this year and subsequent flooding from weeks of high rainfall.
Some of this infrastructure has already been repaired and in next week’s edition you’ll read about the (quite literally) constructive collaboration between civil society organisations in Kenton and Bushmans and the municipality to repair the Middle Beach parking area damaged by high seas.
We will also share with you the amazing behind-thescenes work NPOs and other civil society organisations have been doing over the past year to make this part of the world a better place.
Many of them actively collaborate with local government, with the aim of achieving the most effective use of their combined resources, for the best outcome for residents.
Exciting news for Port Alfred is an inaugural Kowie River festival scheduled for December 28. Details have yet to be confirmed, but our early information is it will combine several river sport and fun events.
At the Kenton & Boesmans
Chamber of Business and Tourism AGM in August, the Kariega Game Reserve’s Graeme Rushmere spoke about the reserve’s 34-year journey from its beginning in 1989 to the 11,500ha – incorporating 23 former individual farms – it is today.
Rushmere also outlined the groundbreaking biodiversity preservation initiatives being undertaken in the Eastern Cape, including the declaration of the 80,000ha Indalo Protected Environment and Buffalo Kloof Protected Environment.
He spoke also about the vision to eventually join together as many wildlife areas as possible between Baviaans and the Great Fish River “by dropping fences, by acquiring land, incorporating new land and joining nonadjacent areas with animal and wildlife corridors
“If this can be done anywhere, it is in these areas of the Eastern Cape,” he said.
He outlined plans to create a conservation area of about 9,000ha between the R343 and R72 by removing the last internal fence in Kariega on the Bushmans River. This is about 1km above the Ghio bridge.
That fence has now been removed, bringing 25km of the Bushmans River Valley into the reserve. The reserve’s website says this has resulted in significant habitat expansion and conservation benefits for keystone herbivores such as elephant and rhino and apex predators like cheetah and lion.
At the Sunshine Coast Tourism and Port Alfred Business Forum’s last networking evening of the year on December 5, the guest speaker was Chris Alexandre from online hospitality ratings site Guest Revu, who assured his audience that despite all our troubles, SA is still a very desirable destination.
If you live or work on the Sunshine Coast, it’s not hard to understand why.