Wilderness & Lakes Environmental Action Forum

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Wilderness Lakes
a National Heritage?

If you support an application to the National Heritage Agency, lodged by Waleaf, to have the Wilderness Lakes region declared a National Heritage site, please send your letters of support to WALEAF@ananzi.co.za

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Jan. 2006	Lakes Eco and Golf Estate Vivien Vibert (Waleaf Secretary) I must take issue with Mr Jan Breytenbach who slated critics of the massive Lakes Golf proposals in your 25 January 2006 edition. He makes many inaccurate statements of which the most glaring are: He states 'categorically' that there will 'no longer be an airfield' and 'one golf course has been removed altogether'. Either he has no idea what his employer the developer is doing, or he is intentionally misleading the public, because in the most recent official documents, the Scoping Report published on 15 December 2005 there are TWO golf courses AND an airfield. HilLand, the environmental consultants, have been preparing the Scoping Report from July 2004 at the latest. Are we to believe the documents now lodged at the Municipality and libraries, or are we to believe Mr Breytenbach? Read more...
Dec. 2005	Recommendation is NO Approval Damon Leff (Executive member) The George Executive Mayoral Committee has recommended an inappropriate application to amend the Knysna-Wilderness- Plettenberg Bay Sub-Regional Structure Plan submitted on behalf of the proposed Lakes Eco & Golf Reserve (Hoogekraal 182/1) by Southnet Projects. In response to criticism against the Mayoral Committee's decision, Deputy Mayor Flip de Swart defended the decision by appealing to the need to redress poverty and promote job creation, rejecting any prescription on how to conserve the environment. Read more...
	Lakes Eco Spring (sic) Report GH 22 December 2005 Mike Leggatt (Vice Chairman) The executive committee of the Wilderness and Lakes Environmental Action Forum would like to express our extreme dissatisfaction with the timing of the release of this report. It was released to the public on 15 December, the very day that HilLand and Associates closed their doors for their Christmas Holiday. Attempts to find the portions that are supposedly digitally available have proved fruitless and until the 9th of January there is no one at the HilLand to assist. Read more...
Sept. 2005	Guardians of the Garden Route Heritage Day March - 24 September The Guardians of the Garden Route, recipients of a Gold Conservation Award, invite the public to participate in a peaceful protest march against the Lakes Eco and Golf Estate and similar large, exclusive developments. Members of the Guardians, a loose affiliation of organisations and individuals, will march in protest against the loss and inappropriate use of our natural heritage as evidenced by this development. Read more...
August 2005	Lakes Eco - Fatal Flaw in Public Participation Process Susan Garner (Treasurer) By the time you read these words, the news may be gathering dust, but we shall put you in the picture of this moment regarding the application procedures of the Lakes Eco and Golf Development located on the north shores of Swartvlei. Read more...
	C.A.P.E CONSERVATION AWARDS Guardians of the Garden Route wins Gold Conservation Award The C.A.P.E Conservation Awards Function was held on the evening of 7 June 2005 at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens. Tasneem Essop, Western Cape MEC for Environment Affairs and Development Planning presented Conservation Awards to a range of projects contributing to the C.A.P.E strategy in the Cape Floristic Region, including projects funded through CEPF, TMF and WWF. In addition, Conservation Awards were presented to eight landowners who have signed contractual agreements with CapeNature. Seven Gold Conservation Awards were also presented to individuals and organizations that have made exceptional contributions to conservation action in the CFR. Recipients included the CEO of CapeNature, Mr David Daitz, the Heiveld Rooibos Tea Co-op, and Gaurdians of the Garden Route (which includes WALEAF) . The Awards Function also saw the launch of a new book on the Baviaanskloof Mega Reserve project. Titled "The Baviaanskloof Mega-reserve: An environmentally, socially and economically sustainable conservation and development initiative," the book was written by Dr Andre Boshoff of the Terrestrial Ecology Unit (Teru) at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. It was co-funded by the Eastern Cape Parks Board and the Table Mountain Fund. © copyright 2004 C.A.P.E. E-News
June 2005	Penny wise and pound foolish Chris Gould (Executive member) Environmentalists and nature lovers alike frequently focus on development as the primary threat to the environment. While uncontrolled development clearly poses a serious threat, nothing can quite compare to a forest fire for sheer environmental devastation, as we saw last week with the massive fires in the Outeniquas, the George Dam area, and between Nature’s Valley and Covi in the Tsitsikamma. Animals and plants are incinerated, watercourses are polluted—and natural forests can take centuries to recover. As global warming continues to dry out southern Africa, the risk of forest fires can only increase. Read more...
	Waleaf AGM - 9 June ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT OUR ENVIRONMENT AND WONDERING WHAT YOU CAN DO TO ENSURE ITS FUTURE? Join WALEAF at our AGM where Mr Yakeen Atwaru, the Deputy Director of Integrated Environmental Management in the Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning will speak on the Public Participation Process and how we, as the public, can be actively involved. The meeting will take place at 6 p.m. on the 9th of June at the Loeirie’s Nest, Ebb and Flow campsite, Wilderness. Entrance is free. All are welcome. For more information, call Esme Morley on 8821293 or Mike Leggatt on 8770575 Read more...
March 2005	Lakes Eco & Golf Estate Pros and cons of the application to amend the Structure (or Guide) Plan One has until 4 April to voice one’s opinion on the Lakes’ application to have the Structure Plan amended from “Agriculture and Forestry to Township” use. There are basically three reasons given by the developer and others in favour of the proposals, but the issues are complex and cannot be boiled down to simplistic phrases such as “job creation”, “alien clearance” and “increase in property values”. Read more...
Febr. 2005	Proposed Moratorium on Golf Developments Judging from the Rapid Review on the environmental impact of golf courses, the government team of consultants would agree with Ho Lin Wun. Their report says that golf courses are appropriate “on the outer areas of urban centres, where land is severely degraded”, but they are NOT appropriate where land “is of significant SCENIC, cultural, social or economic value.” Read more...
Sept. 2004	Arbor Week Damon Leff On Thursday 9 September members of the Wilderness and Lakes Environmental Action Forum gathered at Touwsranten Primary School to celebrate Arbor Week with the planting of both indigenous and fruit trees. Read more...
July 2004	“New Sedgetown” - Lakes and Eco Golf Reserve Vivien Vibert In a recent issue of Wild News we took a bird’s eye view of the approach to sustainable development in a city in Brazil. This time we zoom in to local detail in connection with “New Sedgetown” (a more realistic name than the honeyed “Lakes and Eco Golf Reserve”). The “newsletters” distributed with Wild News are written by the developer Steyn Fourie and his team so consider the source when you read them and apply a critical eye to the detail. For example, what are the public supposed to make of the employment possibilities as described by the developer’s very own documents? Read more...
	Lakes Eco Golf Reserve Open Day: 10 July Esme Morley Another Lakes Eco Golf Reserve “Open Day” was held at the Wilderness Protea Hotel on Saturday 10 July. The purpose of this meeting was to round-off the stakeholder engagement process as part of the application for amendment to the regional structure plan. It also marked the beginning of the scoping phase of the EIA (environmental impact assessment process). Some of the specialists were available for public engagement regarding their findings. Despite the fact that the meeting was called at very short notice, there was reasonable public turnout. Read more...
	Curitiba, Brazil - Inspirational Eco-City Esme Morley We were going to take a deeper look into the management of our waterways this week, but research takes time and life is busy! Instead, here is a story of an inspirational eco-city in Brazil which serves to illustrate what wonders can be achieved through careful planning and vision. Curitiba is a city with a population of 2.2 million (in 1998) and has undergone huge growth since the 1950’s when the population stood at 300 000. It is a prosperous, clean and mostly economically self-sufficient city. Trees are everywhere due to the fact that the city council keeps donating large numbers of trees to different neighborhoods to encourage greening of the city. Read more...
	THERE’S TALK OF A GREAT NATURE CORRIDOR: ADDO TO EDEN Sue Garner WILDLIFE CORRIDOR. These two words awaken a definitive flavour of the African frontier, African naturalness, the African heritage. Today in conservation circles around the globe, the word is CORRIDORS, nature corridors that link National Parks with Provincial Reserves, Marine Reserves with protected lagoons, Private Nature Reserves with privately owned pockets of neighbouring farms and smallholdings that form Conservancies. Why the need for these links? To answer a growing motivation, both from governments and concerned individuals, to conserve connected regions of richly bio-diverse ecosystems that extend the terrestrial, riverine and marine roaming terrains for dozens upon dozens of indigenous wildlife and their associated pristine ecosystems. This is a vision to protect, to nourish, to return to nature its own uninterrupted field of interacting and balancing intelligence. It’s on more and more governmental agendas, Spacial Development Plans and individual minds than ever before. Perhaps its time has come. Read more...
June 2004	DEFINITELY Living in Different Worlds Esme Morley As Councillor Simons put it “Wilderness must not become a haven for the rich at the expense of the indigenous people. Developers buy out poor families so they can build their vanity-fairs and resorts”. Will the existence of elite, upper crust establishments such as the proposed Lakes Eco Golf Reserve, create greater disparities between rich and poor? Lets take a closer look at the latest Lakes Eco Golf Reserve Newsletter which, once again, has been creatively and colourfully crafted and even contains a few honorable ideas. We must hand it to this development team, they’re slick, oh so slick! However, many notions presented need to be questioned. Read more...
	AGM - Lancewood Farm and the Klein Wolwe River Esme Morley We would like to thank everyone that attended our AGM on Thursday, 3rd of June. It was very encouraging to have such a good turnout and we greatly appreciated getting feedback from our members. Having ratified our Constitution, we now formally exist, and can act as an “official” forum. Our guest speaker Bool Smuts sowed many interesting ideas on making conservation an economically viable land-use alternative. We hope that some of these ideas take root in our area and flourish! Read more...
	The Lakes Eco Impact: VISUAL POLLUTION FOR SEDGEFIELD & TOURISM Rose Brettell So much grapevine gossip amongst residents about this controversial Lakes Eco and Golf Reserve, but very little has been highlighted about the Visual Impact of such a gigantic development on the green backdrop of Swartvlei. Make this mental comparison: Currently 1654 properties exist in Sedgefield and Smutsville, covering an area of approximately 717.8 hectares (ratepayers register 2004). In contrast, Lakes Eco has proposed 850 large up market houses, 200 condominiums, hotels, restaurants, 60 gentlemen estates, 50 bush-camps, a polo field, village centre, 2 golf courses with clubhouses and academy, an airport and a marina on Swartvlei. Read more...
May 2004	We came, we saw, we are conquering? Response to Steyn Fourie's neighbourly criticism: George Herald 29 April 2004 Damon Leff In the George Herald of 29 April 2004, Mr. Steyn Fourie is quoted as saying, "the most vociferous of my critics are those land owners who have already established homes nearby and fear intrusion into their privacy in the long run such land owners cannot continue to be selfish such attitudes, while so many local people remain untrained, unskilled and jobless, remind me of the Old South Africa that I wish to have no part of." [paraphrased] Read more...
	Sustainable Development: Garden Route Investments Sue Garner SO MUCH TALK of “sustainable development” these days…but what does it really mean? In essence it should represent the pursuit of human development, carried out with ecological and social integrity, ensuring that the needs and actions of the present generation do not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The wholesale marketing of the notion of a “Golf Mecca” as “sustainable development” needs careful scrutiny, particularly in the most sensitive nature, lake and lagoon areas of the Garden Route, namely the Lakes District. Read more...
April 2004	WALEAF & the Case of the Unplucked Chicken Susan Garner Members of the Wilderness and Lakes Environmental Action Forum (WALEAF) are back to regular meetings after a short season of reorganisation and executive recruitment, holidays, newborn babies (and a bank account) and, generally, some deep thinking about the future of our beautiful Lakes District environment! After some reflection, we realize the need to re-examine some basic perceptions. Read more...
Feb 2004	Mega Golf Reserve at Swartvlei Informed Public Awareness is Essential Susan Garner It seems that the George Municipal authorities have found a favoured solution to the problem of joblessness and housing shortages in the area: promote and approve more golf estates. They actively endorse this golf-estate approach claiming added benefits of increasing tourism and drawing much needed capital into the Garden Route. Win, win, win? The Wilderness and Lakes Environmental Action Forum (WALEAF) says, "Think again!" Read more...
	The proposed Lakes Eco and Golf Reserve Mike Leggatt The trend both nationally and internationally towards developments of all types, is to identify their effects on the environment. This is not surprising due to the relentless pressure that remains and increases on our finite natural resources. This is borne out by the numerous international conventions for the protection of the environment of which South Africa is a signatory and participant. Read more...
Jan 2004	Invitation: Waleaf's First Public Meeting With the six months since our formation now behind us, it is with great anticipation that we await the challenges of the year ahead. As WALEAF is now properly constituted and firmly established as an Environmental watchdog, the time has come to put on a public face. Read more...
Oct 2003	Sustainable Development in the Garden Route The Garden Route is currently experiencing a huge surge in popularity. We are seeing an increasing number of local and foreign visitors, developers and investors, and many new residents in the area. There is no question as to why people are being attracted to this beautiful and special stretch of coast. However, what we do need to question is how this process of development and growth unfolds. It is vitally important that it takes place sensitively and sustainably. Read more...
Sep 2003	Formation of the Wilderness & Lakes Environmental Forum Growth in rural and urban areas is inevitable, and while it may be true that one cannot stop development, we all have the capacity to guide and limit its repercussions. In an area as richly blessed with such diverse natural beauty as the Garden Route, those of us living here ought to feel a fundamental responsibility to ensure that development is sustainable and in keeping with the intrinsic character of the area. Read more...