GARDEN ROUTE NEWS - As part of its mandate to protect and conserve the natural heritage of the country, SA National Parks (SANParks) is scaling up efforts to clean up areas in and around the Garden Route National Park (GRNP), in accordance with its agreement with the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries.

As part of a concerted drive to keep the identified areas clean, it was decided to increase the number of individuals working on the programme and a total of 23 teams were identified to do so since August. 

Nine teams serve the George / Wilderness and Sedgefield areas while the remaining 14 focus on Knysna, Harkerville and Diepwalle. There are currently eight people in a team, but this will increase to 12 in the near future.

"Our jurisdiction for cleaning up from George to Sedgefield includes Herold's Bay, Victoria Bay, Leentjiesklip and Wilderness Beach right through to Sedgefield (Gericke's Point)," explained the Wilderness-based Working for the Coast Project manager, Sury Makwena. 

"These teams also maintain hiking trails and boardwalks in Wilderness. It has been observed that plastic makes up a huge amount of litter that was picked up after lockdown."

According to Makwena, the teams have recently started picking up nurdles (tiny plastic pellets) - a mammoth task, especially with the hours on duty and the time and patience required to pick them up. She added that while it may be difficult to have spotless beaches, the teams try their level best to keep them as tidy as possible. 

Making sure the beaches are spotless. 

In Knysna alone, 9kg of nurdles were picked up between Buffalo Bay and Brenton Beach. The Knysna project manager, Scott Ronaldson, confirmed that 17 buckets of glass and porcelain were collected in one area in Knysna in October.

Said GRNP general manager Vuyiswa Thabethe: "Pollution is a major threat to biodiversity and SANParks is committed to invest the available resources to tackle pollution and increase awareness inside and outside the GRNP."

She further acknowledged the work done by Garden Route District Municipality on coastal clean-ups of nurdles on 4 and 6 November. "It goes to show that anti-pollution initiatives are taken seriously in the Garden Route and that the problem needs a collective effort as it is not a one-man show," Thabethe said.

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