DEAR Editor:
There’s a crooked little spruit running down from the highest point on the golf course, clothed in dense riverine forest for the most part.
It wends its way across David Road, goes underground through much of suburban Scottburgh South, then pops up again just west of Saville Place where it nurtures a beautiful forest, rich in birdlife.
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Meandering along, across Ann Arbor, the green canopy opens into a shaded park where magnificent wild figs, ancient umdonis and other forest giants reach for the sky.
This is Erf 402, Scottburgh.
A welcome respite from the clustered sea of houses, churches and offices surrounding it.
A green lung, allowing the densely-packed suburb to breathe.
A natural place, a refuge for a surprising variety of bird and other suburban wildlife to flourish and thrill us with their continued presence in our busy town.
Over the years I’ve seen and photographed raptors in this park – sparrowhawks, black and little, African goshawks, African harrier-hawks and long-crested eagles.
And mammals – mongooses, banded and slender, rock dassies, large-spotted genets – and once, the tiny pointed spoor of a blue duiker obviously venturing up the green corridor from the admiralty reserve beyond Bermuda Way and the railway tracks.
There is no doubt this little river system is an important bio-corridor for the surviving remnants of wildlife that once thrived throughout Scottburgh.
And the park forms a vital link in the chain of habitat that offers these creatures food and shelter in their timeless quest to find territories and mates to spread their genes and continue their species.
Don’t let them destroy this oasis that graces our suburb and sustains our wildlife by turning it into a monstrous lump of concrete and parking lot.
We have only one open space left in Scottburgh South. And no shortage of churches.
Do register as an interested party with the environmental consultants Green-Scene felicity@green-scene.co.za, read the proposal, have your say – and help stop this abomination forever.
PETER VOS
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