
I attended a get-together the other day of ratepayers, conservationists and other interested parties at Leka’s in Southport, which borders the Bendigo Nature Reserve.
We were promised a talk on the Admiralty Reserve but our speaker didn’t pitch.
Not to be completely dismayed, Joan Gallagher, our Bendigo Conservancy chairperson, turned it into a general discussion on the admiralty reserve.
Having established the parameters of the reserve itself and the protocols attached to it; we elaborated on the extent to which these protocols had been honoured in the breach thereof.
The solution arrived at was education – ‘education, education, education’ – to general murmurs of agreement.
I believe that the problem perennial to our beautiful land south of the Gariep, Molopo, and Limpopo, is enforcement. The difficult part is getting it applied. And it’s not by raising salaries or creating more generals.
Maybe I’m wrong about the solution. Perhaps we’re too far down the slippery slope of non-enforcement ever to get back. Perhaps the august body of philosophers on the veranda at Leka’s were right, and it is education.
Teach children that our happiness depends on the happiness of our environment.
Teach adults that if you open a pathway from your gate to the beach, or hack down the branches that spoil your view, you’re opening funnels blasting erosion; that if you plant those beautiful water hyacinths in your fishpond you’re taking the first step to the clogging of our fresh-water arteries.
Problems and solutions – that’s speculation.
I’m going to pick-up that rubbish between my house and the beach, join those conservancy guys and Tidy Towns getting rid of invasive aliens (and I’m not talking about we ex-vaalies), tap that guy, poisoning the amatungulu hedge, on the shoulder and explain to him the error of his ways.
Right now.
ZAC GRAHAM
Sunwich Port
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