SOUTH Africa’s only community- owned and managed recreational fly fishery has won a prestigious United Nations environmental entrepreneurship award – weeks before it even opens to Eastern Cape trout enthusiasts in December.
Less than a year after unemployed Cata villagers, the Border Rural Committee (BRC) and Rhodes University fish experts began working on the groundbreaking Amatola Wild Trout Fishery, the project is already being hailed as a blueprint for eco-friendly community upliftment.
Besides pulling well-heeled fishing fanatics to the Keiskammahoek area, the fishery has also provided dozens of jobs clearing hectares of invasive alien vegetation – that would rob the area of precious water resources if left to grow wild – on the banks of the Mnyameni Dam and Cata River.
BRC fieldworker Ashley Westaway said being announced as one of only six South African winners of the internationally acclaimed UN- sponsored Seed Initiative Award would have “tremendous networking benefits” for the local community.
“The message that the award will send to the villages is: Yes, even though we live in a remote rural area, and face many challenges, we can do it!”
Scheduled to open in time for the December holidays, the catch-and- release trout fishery is expected to bring “high-end market tourism activity” to marginalised communities in the Keiskammahoek area – and provide much-needed skills training and job creation.
According to Westaway, the real value of the award was that it gave the community project access to the Seed international partner network and provided the “opportunity to garner an international profile” – before it even opened.
“The networking benefits will be tremendous. Seed will offer us business support and a financial contribution that will be used to enhance our sustainability plan.”
The award is also expected to further motivate and mobilise the community and “serve as a basis for facilitating the intellectual development of the youth of the villages in subjects such as tourism and business studies”.
Rhodes University Department of Ichthyology and Fisheries Science rural fisheries programme manager Qurban Rouhani said although rainbow and brown trout were not indigenous to South Africa, they had been successfully introduced to the Cata area as far back as the early 1900s.
Although the trout fishing potential of the area was largely forgotten in recent years after the area was expropriated for inclusion in the erstwhile Ciskei bantustan, Sydney Hayes wrote about his fishing adventures in Cata and Mnyameni in the early 1920s in his book Rapture of the River. The trout have long-established breeding populations in the area and Rouhani says the project would operate on a strict catch-and-release policy – instead of restocking the area – to help protect indigenous fish species like the threatened Border barb.
While there “are no plans by government to start eradicating trout from these areas”, efforts are being made to conserve the Border barb. “There are very few trout below the dam so we plan to fish for trout above the dam and conserve the barb below the dam, creating a balance.”
According to the Seed Initiative website, 30 global winners – including six from South Africa – cracked the nod this year.
These included “a novel solar device that turns waste heat into electricity in rural China, a Ugandan business that manufactures stationery from agricultural waste, a bamboo bicycle project in Ghana, and a female-run business in South Africa making a hand-held laundry device that saves water”.
“The Seed Awards recognise inspiring social and environmental entrepreneurs whose businesses can help meet sustainable development challenges.
“By helping entrepreneurs to scale-up their activities, the Seed Initiative, which is hosted by the UN Environment Programme, aims to boost local economies and tackle poverty, while promoting the sustainable use of resources and ecosystems.”
By DAVID MACGREGOR
Source Daily Dispatch