By Nangamso Mabindla
13 July 2004

THE Buffalo City municipality has taken a big step towards eco-tourism by declaring two Nahoon nature reserves protected sites.

The two nature reserves - the Nahoon Point Nature Reserve and the Nahoon Estuary Nature Reserve (known as the Dassie Trail) - have a lot to offer the city's citizens and tourists, says the City's amenities manager, Willie Maritz.

"And the objectives of our projects are to make sure these nature reserves are used to benefit our people," Maritz adds.

Protecting the sites will help kindle an appreciation of the cultural and natural history of the area. Nahoon Point is a valuable prehistoric site - famous for the 200 000-year-old footprints that were discovered here in the 1960s - and the Dassie Trail is a sanctuary for these small mammals and birds.

Plans include educational workshops, eco-trails and displays of fauna and flora.

"We would like to provide a service to all citizens of the city with regard to eco-tourism initiatives, environmental educational and leisure activities. We would also like to promote the area for tourism."

However, much needs to be done to make the area visitor-friendly. A major obstacle to the development of Nahoon Point is vandalism.

"We need to guard against vandalism and illegal dumping generally. The Dassie Trail has also been vandalised but Nahoon Point is worse," Maritz says.

Information boards along the Dassie Trail have been removed and people have been ignoring instructions on signs at the entrance to the trail. Some people have also dumped rubbish on the trail.

The municipality's sewage pump-station is also there.

The vision for the Dassie Trail, says Maritz, is to preserve the estuary and provide the city's citizens - especially schoolchildren - with a safe, tranquil and educational nature experience.

"We also want to secure the place to ensure the safety of all visitors while creating a safe haven for birds and small mammals like the dassie."

The project would also help eliminate alien vegetation - which would benefit indigenous plants, trees, grass and flowers.

Ossie Banks, the senior adviser at the nature reserve, says the reserve needs a major facelift if it is to be a tourist attraction.

"We have a lot of things we would like to improve here. One is to clean up the Dassie Trail and make it safer for the people who use it. We would also like to clean the reserve and remove the debris of trees that were washed away by the floods in 2002," says Banks.

The reserve also boasts an area where mangrove trees grow: on the edges of the Nahoon dam, where salty water comes in with the tide.

Banks says the Nahoon Estuary Nature Reserve is home to many dassies. Small buck and porcupine used to live in the reserve but have vanished - poached by hunters.

"Dassies are the only ones left. The porcupines were eaten by people and the buck have also become extinct," says Banks.

But the municipality is planning to return the two reserves to their former state.

As Maritz says: "If the municipality and the citizens work together, the dream will become a reality."