Hippos, zebras and wildebeest oh my!

Today was our first big wildlife day. We started our morning with a boat tour of St. Lucia Lake where we saw amazing bird species everywhere including the beautiful African fish eagle, terns, swallows, swifts, spoon bills, egrets, pide kingfischer and we saw our first hippos! There were hippos cooling off all over the lake. They are very docile looking animals but we have been repeatedly warned about how dangerous they can be. Everyone tells us about how many deaths each year are caused from hippos and then one of our new South African friends showed us a video of a hippopotamus charging a car and taking a big bite out of it and we were convinced not to go anywhere near them.

This photo above is our group for our week long journey.

After our tour of the lake we started our journey of learning about and meeting the amazing people who run iSimangaliso Wetland Park. The park became South Africa’s first world heritage site in 1999 due to its unique biological processes and rich biodiversity found no where else in the world. The park is also exceptionally beautiful across it’s entire 332,000 hectares, containing 8 interlinked ecosystems, 526 bird species, 700 year old fishing traditions, most of South Africa’s remaining swamp forests and it’s Africa’s largest estuarine system.

The protection of this important area started from the passion of a few people and has grown into something very special. The park gives employment opportunities to around 7,000 people living in and around it. They directly employ 1,500 low income locals in their regeneration project which has successfully removed over 15,000 hectares of plantations. They also have a phenomenal job creation program that supports green entrepreneurship in the communities around Park. They continue supporting these businesses beyond just funding them. For example they support local artisans, many of whom have no formal education, in the sale of their art to ensure they are not getting ripped off by the resales.

We also met four amazing interns who were all supported by a scholarship program run by the iSimangaliso Wetland Park authority. These youth came from families who could not afford to support their children in attending post secondary school. The scholarship program not only provides financial support but also counselling and job search help. Many of the youth who enrolled in this program ended up working with the park. One of the young men who presented to us on the work he had been doing with the park was able to send money home to his family while studying because of the opportunity he was given through the park.

We finished off the day by splitting up into groups to talk about anthropocentric views, what happiness means to us, how we value our ecosystems, who we think is responsible for the problems of our world and how we value time.

Stay tuned for tomorrows post about our visit to a traditional Zulu village.