LEADING international eco- tourism expert Prof Mark Orams has hailed the proposed Addo marine protected area that will link the huge elephant park to the sea.

Orams is a senior member of the Coastal & Marine Tourism Congress (CMTG) steering committee and he is in Port Elizabeth for the 6th CMTG which was launched with a welcoming ceremony at the Boardwalk last night.

A Kiwi based at Auckland University of Technology, he also has an unusual connection to the Eastern Cape. When he was a teenager he spent a year here and was part of the winning school team in a provincial yachting championship on the Swartkops River.

He said the Addo project was “brilliant and enlightened”.

“It is recognition that wild creatures do not recognise our human boundaries. For creatures like penguins and seals, the transition between land and sea is critical to their life-cycles. Even more than that, this project captures the essence of the connectivity of all life between the land and the sea.”

There are a handful of similar wildlife reserves around the world which link the land and the sea but the sheer scale of Addo‘s land zone and the size and biodiversity of the envisaged marine zone will make it exceptional, he said. “I think this is something you will look back on and say: ‘That‘s something we really did right‘.”

With unspoiled nature steadily diminishing around the world, there is a growing body of tourists interested in experiencing these places, he said.

“In particular there are very few places left in the world where you can walk for miles on the beach and encounter no human influence.

“South Africa and in particular the Eastern Cape is blessed in this regard. You need to act to protect what you‘ve got.”

In 1981, when Oram was 17, he spent a year in Grahamstown as an exchange student at St Andrew‘s College. It was a key period in his life, he said.

“I was from a very modest public school back home so it was a great privilege to me. I wept like a baby when it was time to leave and now that I‘m finally back I realise why.”

Having arrived early for the congress, he has already been up to Grahamstown to visit Rhodes University agricultural and environmental economics professor Geoff Antrobus and his family, and to speak at St Andrew‘s.

“It was a wonderful time of my youth.

“One of the highlights was being a member of the St Andrew‘s crew that took the provincial yachting championship on the Swartkops River.”

He went on to excel at the sport on a much larger stage, being part of the crew that won the 1989/90 Whitfield round-the- world race and then the 2000 crew which defended the America‘s Cup for New Zealand.