The Beauty and the Beast - Ozabeni and Karl Bentley Some call it the Achilles Heel of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park. Others see it as the Gorongoza of South Africa. The truth is it’s both! The Park’s exceptional, distinctive beauty is well known, acknowledged by its World Heritage Site status. But what lies beyond the reach of tourism is its northern section, the 42km long, loosely-shaped, rectangular Ozabeni Park that largely serves as a flat wetland draining from Sodwana Bay south into the lake. It is here that Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife is currently experiencing its most focussed rhino poaching threat – and casualties. Of the 67 rhino that the organisation has lost this year, 17 have gone down in Ozabeni. Conservation Manager Karl Bentley is big; in size, passion and vision. His wording is short, expletive-minced! He curses the park’s porous borders and thunders loudly with frustration. He’s your proverbial character. He’d only been in the job a few months when he ‘bust’ a syndicate stealing cycads from the Coastal Forest Reserve; red-handed, he caught the thieves in the process of transporting 92 of them away! He’s well known for a long story where he eventually had to front up to a charging black rhino, standing his ground when, against the odds, it veered away at the last moment. There are many gung-ho, legendary stories about Karl Bentley, a number of which stem from his years working in Ezemvelo’s Marine Compliance unit. Here he hooked more illegal shad and crayfish “shlenterers” than were in the ocean, or so he put it! But this is only half the story. For all the bluster, Karl is a bird-watcher, an admirer of landscape, bio-diversity and wildlife. He’s as sharp as a button and surprisingly gentle and insightful. It’s hardly surprising he’s such a valued member of Ezemvelo’s field staff. Ozabeni is as huge as the poaching threat is real. Out of frustration, he speaks of driving into the park at the dead of night, flashing the lights of his bakkie to create a law enforcement presence, hoping to deflect some of the many syndicates that target Ozabeni. Rhino in vulnerable areas of Ozabeni are frequently corralled by his bakkie into safer areas. He is renowned for the phrase; “Rhinos aint saved in the office”. He might hate them but he’s able to hold an almost perverse admiration for the poacher’s feats of endurance and athleticism. “Listen, some of these guys are super-human. They are rugged like you can’t believe. They can walk and hide and jog for 30-40kms in a day. We’ve followed them to the point of capture and then when you think you’ve got them cornered, they break out of their hideout, flick their antelope prey off their shoulders and they’re gone; like that.” To patrol this park borders on the nightmarish. Its overall 64 000ha expanse has only 50 kms of boundary fencing, though much of the park reveals natural obstacles. The entire eastern section comprises a line of large sand dunes bordering the Indian Ocean while a smaller section of its north-western boundary comprises the vast Muzi Pan. So, while the sea and beach form a barrier of sorts on the one hand, Muzi Pan and the lower Mkhuze swamps act as inhospitable swamp land on the other, a buffer from the KwaJobe and Mnqobokazi communities. “Man, its one thing to even think of crossing these reed beds and wade through that swamp. But these poachers not only do that they even hide out there; I mean for a whole two or three nights, if needs be. These are soldiers of another kind”. The obstacles mount. There’s Ozabeni’s open corridor road that leads to Sodwana Bay and passes through the north-western part of the park; then a slice of its northern section is given over to the community’s cattle and their herders who could well be the eyes and ears for poachers. And his scarce resources have still to deal with the illegal crafts and gillnetters on the western boundary of Muzi Pan who cross into Ozabeni. And, he’s bedevilled by his own staff shortages, a familiar deprivation that Ezemvelo is trying to overcome, despite the stringent financial climate. (Plans are well advanced to beef up Ezemvelo’s presence here with new field rangers being brought in). Despite all this, Karl Bentley is able to see beyond. And in Ozabeni he sees future greatness for bio-diversity and tourism. “This is an incredible region. I really believe it will one day be one of KZN’s greatest game reserves. You know Gorongoza in Mozambique? Well, this place reminds me of it. It also holds so much diversity; coastal forests, pans, small lakes and outcrops of wetland forest.” We travel south down the only dirt road. He points out this landscape, identifying some of its abundant birdlife; Secretary birds and Stanley Bustards, for example. We head south to the border of the 15 000ha Wilderness section. His appreciation for its potential reflects the priority that the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority places on Ozabeni’s future. The ‘Authority’ is now in the process of erecting wooden viewing towers at strategic sites within the Park. And there is real talk about fencing out the cattle and their herders that wander so freely inside Ozabeni’s northern areas. Future plans include introducing elephant, buffalo, cheetah, wild dog, eland, waterbuck etc. But for now it’s all about security. (4 photos)
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 15:43:46 +0000