The Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park
Some Facts and Figures
The cultural and ecological treasures of the GSLWP - which, broadly, covers northern Maputaland east of the N2 highway between St. Lucia town in the south and Kosi Bay in the north- are so great as to defy the normal rules of sentence construction:
 280 km. of coastline and beaches |
 100 species of coral |
| 8 inter-linking ecosystems |
| the major swamp forests left in South Africa |
| 3 major lake systems including Kosi Bay, Lake St. Lucia and Lake Sibayi |
| zero other
places in the world where the world's largest terrestrial mammals (elephants) range within kilometers of where the world's largest marine
mammals (whales) swim
|
| 8 major game reserves in the broader Maputaland |
| 105 years of conservation (the St. Lucia Park was declared a game reserve 3 years after the Yellowstone National Park and is Africa's oldest protected area) |
| all 5 of the Big Five |
| the highest number and density of black rhino in any place on the globe |
| 105 red data species |
| 5 species of turtles |
| the highest number of frog species in southern Africa (35 of which 2 are endemic) |
| 36 species of snakes |
| 526 bird species |
| 80 species of dragon flies |
| 110 species of butterflies on the Eastern Shores of St. Lucia alone |
| more than 2000 species of flowering plants |
| all 5 of South Africa's surviving mangrove tree species |
| 25 000 year old coastal dunes, among the highest in the world |
| 700-year-old fish traps, commented on for the natural and cultural beauty by early Portuguese explorers |
| 5 natural groups: Zulu, Swazi, Shangaan, Tonga and relic group of Gonda speakers |
COELACANTH DISCOVERED IN GREATER ST. LUCIA WETLAND PARK
The Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park can now add a living fossil to its record of marine species with the recent discovery of three living Coelacanths in a submarine canyon off the coast near Sodwana Bay late last year.
The Coelacanth is a fish thought to be extinct until a live specimen was caught in a trawler net in 1938 off the Chalumna River Mouth off the Eastern Cape.
See and read more about this by visiting www.world-stream.com