Once in a while it is nice to have something nice to blog about.
There is a pan situated in the Viljoenskroon area (Route R59 – heart of the Free State Province) which is a reasonable sized pan that is home to a flock of lesser flamingos that is worth seeing.
thanks to Birdlife.org for picture of flamingo
The town of Viljoenskrron is a small maize and cattle farming town which is located approximately 45km from Bothaville and Orkney, and approximately 60km from Potchefstroom, Klerksdorp, Kroonstad and Parys. So if you do happen to visit one of these other towns for any reason whatsoever take the opportunity to see the flamingos as well.
But I digress. On a recent visit to Bothaville we passed over the pan and I happened to notice something lying close to the water’s edge that seemed to be out place. We then drove back from Bothaville later in the day we stopped next to the dam. I walked through the long grass towards the water’s edge and managed to find what I was looking for. It was a heap of old sacking and tarpaulins which had been dumped there. The pictures below show what I found.
I noticed that there was a warehouse/factory situated close by but it was fenced in and totally separate from where I was standing. I took down the details as I wanted to contact them during the week to find out if they could throw any light on where the mess had originated from.
The factory/warehouse belongs to RE Groundnuts and I was told to contact a Mr. Koos Nienaber.
Mr Nienaber was unaware of the pollution and undertook to investigate my claims. He promptly came back to me as to what had been dumped there and confirmed that it hadn’t originated from their premises. And although it was outside their factory/warehouse area he undertook to borrow a front end loader and remove the items from the water’s edge.
A subsequent email from Mr Nienaber confirmed that the amount of pollution was greater than what was first anticipated, and he indicated that the final loads would be removed during last week and be completed by Saturday 02 June 2012.
It is heart-warming to still find people out there who, although the dumping did not come from them, are willing to get stuck in a clean up the mess. If we had more people and firms like RE Groundnuts and Mr Nienaber, who in this case are willing to do positive things and clean up the environment, we could go a long way to preserving our delicate ecology from reaching a stage where the harm become irreversible.
Conservation view:
Despite being the most numerous species of flamingo, the lesser flamingo is classified as near-threatened due to its declining population and the low number of breeding sites, some of which are threatened by human activities.
paulsmusing2 