The purpose of the 4u2fish campaign

The 4u2fish campaign is in place to assist the residents of Umkhanyakude district municipality with their public perception management strategies associated with fishing rights and related access rights to zones where harvesting of natural renewable resources (fishing) takes place within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park World heritage site.

Sunset jetty in St. Lucia KZN South Africa 

The 4u2fish campaign need these public perception management strategies in place to counter the bad reputation that fisher folks and other recreational beach users have acquired due to the attitudes, actions and activities of the many developers, especially within the environmental tourism industry, who are always on the lookout for cheap land in places where people gather for leisure activities. 

By giving fisher folks, and other harvesters of natural renewable resources a bad rap, these developers exclude the local community and put up developments that are not fisher folk friendly, which some how exclude the local population. These developments usually cater for the upper market, with a focus on international tourism and the trendy crowd, who are mostly arm chair environmentalists, with little practical exposure to real life environmental problems.

 
The primary purpose of the #4u2fish campaign is to generate public awareness of the problems and issues that impact on our collective fishing experiences, and then generate meaningful public discussions and conversations around our public awareness campaigns, events and activities with the intent on improving the domestic tourism markets. 

The intentions of the 4u2fish campaign is to improve domestic tourism associated with recreational beach use within the Umkhanyakude District municipality.

the 4u2fish campaign is primarily concerned with fishing within the iSimangaliso Wetland park, which includes but is not restricted to

• the Elephant Coast Beaches previously known as the Maputalnd Coast.
• Lake St. Lucia and the St. Lucia estuary systems
• The Umfolozi Flats and associated flood plains
• The Sodwana tourism Hub
• The Manguzi tourism Hub which includes Kozi bay
• The Hluhluwe tourism Hub with False bay, charters creek and Fanies island
• The St. Lucia tourism Hub
• The Jozini dam tourism zone

READ more about about the purpose of the 4u2fish project here

Our fishing rights within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park World Heritage Site is going to be a very serious political battle, but we will have the rural communities  of Umkhanyakude district municipality behind us, as all losses or erosion of fishing rights within the area have negative impacts on their livelihoods, and these are mostly due to the fact that these folks rely heavily on the domestic tourism market  for their survival.

tourists to Umkhanyakude spread their impact far and wide, starting by filling up with petrol, and then spreading out to these areas amongst many others

• accommodation and hospitality
• food and beverage
• guided tours
• nature / environmentally based
• culturally based
•  historically based
• arts and crafts shopping
• passing trade on roadside informal shopping

The economic knock on impacts of these infringements of our collective environmental rights as in #Section 24 of the South African Constitution are quite scary and a cause for immense concern within the northern reaches of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park in north east KZN South Africa

For more information send an email to 4u2fish@info4u.co.za or do a #HashTag Search for #4u2fish using your favourite search engine.

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