St. Lucia Wetlands Guest House

Lake St. Lucia - some Facts & 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:

1. 280 km. of coastline and beaches
2. 100 species of coral
3. 8 inter-linking ecosystems
4. the major swamp forests left in South Africa
5. 3 major lake systems including Kosi Bay, Lake St. Lucia and Lake Sibayi
6. 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
7. 8 major game reserves in the broader Maputaland
8. 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)
9. all 5 of the Big Five
10. the highest number and density of black rhino in any place on the globe
11. 105 red data species
12. 5 species of turtles
13. the highest number of frog species in southern Africa (35 of which 2 are endemic)
14. 36 species of snakes
15. 526 bird species
16. 80 species of dragon flies
17. 110 species of butterflies on the Eastern Shores of St. Lucia alone
18. more than 2000 species of flowering plants
19. all 5 of South Africa's surviving mangrove tree species
20. 25 000 year old coastal dunes, among the highest in the world
21. 700-year-old fish traps, commented on for the natural and cultural beauty by early Portuguese explorers
22. 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

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