The eastern shores of Lake St. Lucia has a rich cultural history, and is really worth a visit if you are in the area of The Greater St. Lucia wetlands Park, Zululand ( KZN or KwaZulu Natal ) South Africa. This area is just ten minuets drive from the town of St. Lucia and a little more than half an hours drive from Mtubatuba, the economic hub of the sub region.

A personal friend of mine, Charles Preen,  has volunteered to give us a write up about the trees planted by the state ( south African government Department of forestory ) on the Eastern shores of Lake St. Lucia, Zululand, south Africa, and you will find some pictures of his operation in the photo galleries pages. Charlie brown as we like to refer to him has a contract to harvest some of these trees, which are in an area that has been in the news a bit, when they reintroduced elephants to the park not so long ago. The trees are in an area where RBM would like to mine for Titanium and other minerals, but have been prevented from doing so by the local population and the tourism sector, who went to great extremes to prevent the mining. One of the spin offs of the anti-mining efforts was that the area was declared a world heritage site, and thus mining should be out of the question forever, but with our government who knows what may happen.

Timber harvesting in the area known the Eastern Shores has been going on for a number of years now, and none of the areas harvested here are being replanted. This is going to lead to a shortage of pine for commercial purposes in the not so distant future. The state is no longer planting any trees on a commercial scale within the areas adjacent to Lake St. Lucia. This has been taken over by  MONDI and SAPPI, as well as a few small scale commercial growers. 

Story with more info comming soon

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Revised: November 25, 2009 02:38:11 -0500 . (South African standard time)