Dr. Ian Player knows Lake St. Lucia, located in South Africa’s Wetlands Park, intimately. He’s dedicated 60 years of his life to saving it. In his youth, Dr. Player fished the lake. By 1970, he would be wrestling and airlifting 50 large crocodiles to save them from salinity of the lake’s waters. For the full article, follow the link below to WILD.
 
The current crisis on Lake St Lucia, the pearl of iSimangaliso Wetland Park (a UN World Heritage Area) as it is now known, began a long time ago, probably when the great Zulu king Shaka rose to power in the 1800’s and began increasing the cattle herds in the Imfolozi catchments. The concomitant soil erosion apart from the natural erosion with the great floods of that period led to a gradual silting of the Lake. However, when I first visited Imfolozi Game Reserve in 1952 the White Imfolozi River was dry, but there were pools 20 feet deep in the Black Imfolozi. I remember this clearly because I was fishing for barbel in the pools below Tumbu and measured the depth with my fishing line. The gradual erosion was, however, nothing compared to the terrible acceleration of erosion when the Imfolozi flats were canalized to create sugar farms, first after the 1914 - 18 war and then after the 1939 - 45 war. The land was handed out to ex-soldiers. Dr Hugh Bennett, the famous soil conservation man who warned President Franklin Roosevelt about the dust bowl, visited the area with T.C. Robertson, Director of the Veld Trust, and told T.C. that the soil was so fertile it could be used for fertilizer!

“The most urgent problem facing South Africa is the environment and this must take precedence over less important political squabbles.”

My own memory of the Lake begins when my father went fishing there in the 1930’s and spoke of it being a fisherman’s paradise. I first saw the Lake in 1947, stayed at the Anglers Hotel and did a boat trip up the narrows and down to the mouth which was open to the sea and the Imfolozi flowed into it. Fishing was superb, but there were serious views being expressed about the soil coming into the lake. In 1952 my first station, after a few days tutelage under Peter Potter, the chief Conservator, was St Lucia estuary, where I relieved Ranger Erasmus.

The drive from Mtubatuba to the estuary was along a dirt road and for many miles the forest canopy, the Dukuduku, was just overhead. In the open grasslands there were small vleis with geese and ducks. We crossed over the Estuary by pont with a group of Zulus pulling on the ropes and singing in magnificent unison. I lived in the Anglers Hotel at a cost of £18-0-0 a month, which left me two pounds - it was enough.

Eric Yeld and his family lived in the Anglers too - he had recently been appointed as Engineer in charge of the reclamation, by the Natal Provincial Administration. We became firm friends - from him I learned about the decision to begin diverting the Imfolozi into the sea to avoid any more silt being deposited. But it was already too late, and the problem was being tackled from the wrong end. Other problems were also looming.

Article Continues: http://www.wild.org/blog/ian-player-perspective-the-crocodiles-of-lake-st-lucia/