St Lucia estuary mouth reopens, community rejoices
South Africa’s largest estuarine lake mouth has been opened, linking the St Lucia Lake to the sea for the first time in almost a decade.
The connection of lake to sea comes after a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral Task Team recommended to iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority in an attempt to ‘nudge’ the system to support natural processes.
Experts say the nudging of the system addresses ongoing ecological and socio-economic challenges experienced by various sectors, including farmers, rural community and fishing.
READ: Plans to bulldoze Lake St Lucia raises concerns
In the past - serious drought in the area has hampered the lake, back in 2014 it went completely dry.
Bulldozing was a short-term solution.
Bulldozing results in an artificial breach of a temporary open of the estuary mouth - But estuarine scientist Nicolette Forbes previously told Newswatch that this interferes with the natural process as well as restoration projects taking place at the lake.
"Now this wasn't a good thing for the estuarine, though it suited a certain sector of the animals that use the estuary like the fish, it wasn't necessarily a good and natural functioning of the estuary. So, the project I was involved in taking in account all of those estuary’s and the different user groups around it to get it back to a much more natural dynamic and not interfering with the mouth is a part of that."
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Forbes says bulldozing is a quick-fix solution that threatens conservationists' restoration project - pushing it back 10 years.
"The whole idea was to let this estuary find its own way back to where it does naturally where the Umfolozi River is linked to the estuary and it is able to open and close the mouth naturally so that they will make that take that back another 10 years by interfering."
Rudi Redinger, member of the St Lucia Rate Payers Association, says, however, they have been waiting for this for many years.
While Petros Mlaba from Sokhulu Farmers says it was a dream come true for the Sokhulu community.
“For so many years we have been crying and fighting - this means that the livelihoods of the community will improve because we live out of subsistence farming.”
