What is happening with coal mining in northern KwaZulu-Natal in a Freshwater Ecosystem Priority Area is a war on water and our climate resilience.
"The southern white rhino has been to the brink of extinction and back, but even as it continues to be under threat from poachers, its survival is largely thanks to the conservation work of one park. Today, most of these rhinos can trace their ancestry back to the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park (HiP) in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa," CNN reported in June 2020.
It was Ian Player and his mentor, Magqubu Ntombela, a game ranger and descendant of the great Zulu chiefs, Shaka and Dingaan, who set up wilderness trails in the iMfolozi and sparked a global wilderness consciousness movement.
As Player wrote, "everyone who comes to the wilderness is changed by it, no one who sleeps on the ground underneath the blaze of southern stars and hears the roar of the lion, the coughing of the leopard, the howl of the hyena, the scream of the elephant and smells the smoke of wild wood burning is ever the same again."
And in what must be recognised as one of the greatest conservation achievements of all time, Ian Player's...