LUMS - Land Use Management Systems.

[Frank]

Land Use Management is an issue within the Elephant Coast where there
are many divergent views, based on culture and politics as well as
economy and tourism.

iSimangaliso Birding Route has to take many factors into account
before making a public statement on these issues. One of our first
problems is that there is no clear municipal policy that we can
evaluate as these are new issues that have never realy been addressed
properly by the local Municipality IDP (Intergrated Developement Plan)
and the District Municipality has not laid out any hard guidelines for
us to follow.

Another issue is the iSimangaliso Wetlands Park authority has
jurisdiction over certain areas, and the 5 local Municipalities and
DMA (District Management Area--- iSimangaliso Wetlands Park Authority)
do not agree on many issues, because of the conflict around

1) Land Use
2) Land Management
3) Environmental issues
4) the 4x4 ban
5) tourism developement
6) Land ownership and ocupational rights

The meeting of the temporary steering committee of iSimangaliso
Birding Route to be held on 5 Jan 2008 will address some of these
issues, then appoint persons to look into these matters and represnt
iSimangalsio Birding Route at the Mtubatuba Municipal IDP and the
iSimangaliso Wetlands Park IMP (Intergrated Management Plan) which
will all be taking place during the next few weeks.