Park

Naute is one of Namibia’s largest man-made lakes. Its shoreline, abutting long stretches of rocky plains and intricate sections of small bays, is very attractive The dam location on the Löwen River was already identified by German engineers over a century ago, yet construction of the reservoir only took place 70 years later. The dam was created as a reliable source of water for the nearby town of Keetmanshoop, and to enable an agricultural scheme adjacent to the reservoir.

The lake creates an ideal focal point for a game park, although this was only proclaimed just prior to independence. Thirty years on, its tourism potential remains untapped, overlooked in the vastness of the ‘forgotten South’. Discussions around a tourism concession with the neighbouring !Gawachab Conservancy may gain momentum in the future. For now, Naute is still worth a brief stop-over visit while travelling between Keetmanshoop and the Fish River Canyon.

Travel Tips

WHEN TO BE THERE:

Visitor access is restricted to the recreation area; this is open all year
Day temperatures can be very hot during summer
Fishing competitions are held intermittently & the recreation area is a weekend retreat for locals
The game park is currently not open to visitors

WHAT TO DO:

Stop at the lake for a refreshing break on your travels
Enjoy a short walk & some good birding
Do a spot fishing along the shore
Visit the nearby agricultural scheme

WHAT TO REMEMBER:

Access is restricted to the small recreation area
A permit is required for fishing, obtainable at the Karas Regional Council in Keetmanshoop
There are no amenities at the dam
Do not litter, take all rubbish with you

Cape Teal

History

It’s hard to imagine now, but Cape Cross was once a bustling little town, the economic hub of German South West Africa. The boom was brief, based on guano and seals. Once the resources were exploited, the bustle was gone. Little remains today beyond the faint parallel lines of rusted railway tracks, a few ruins and a cemetery.

‘The Father of History’, the Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the fourth century before Christ, claimed in The Histories that Phoenician seafarers were the first to circumnavigate Africa around 600 years before the Current Era. The journey was never validated by other historical records. The first Europeans confirmed to have set foot on the southwestern coast of Africa were Portuguese sailors.

Like his predecessors, the Portuguese monarch Dom João II hoped to access African riches while opening a trade route around the continent. He ordered his trusted seafarer Diogo Cão to explore beyond the equator, at the time the furthest latitude of European knowledge of Africa’s Atlantic coast. On his first journey, Cão reached Cape Saint Mary in modern-day Angola in 1483. His second expedition ventured as far as Cape Cross.

Cão erected stone pillars as signs of Portuguese dominion, and placed one at Cape Cross in January 1486 (although the cross bears the inscription 1485). The cross, known in Portuguese as a padrão, was removed by German sailors in 1893 and is housed in a German museum. A simple replica was installed in 1895, and a more realistic version was put up close to the first in 1980.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, numerous German and British vessels explored the southwestern coastline of Africa. They knew of the Portuguese voyages and several reported seeing the padrão at Cape Cross, but weren’t able to land in the often-difficult conditions there. Captain von Raven planted a wooden signboard in the small bay north of the headland to proclaim German occupation of the coast in 1884. While exploring the seaboard in the same year, the German Captain Hoffmann provided the first definite record of seals at Cape Cross. Cape fur seals had already been recorded during Cão’s voyage, but far to the north, with no mention made of them at the peninsula.

In 1894, businessman Ernst Hermann sent the adventurous prospector Walter Matthews to scout for resources along the coast north of Swakopmund. Reaching Cape Cross, Matthews immediately saw the potential of the seal colony, as well as the guano deposits he found nearby. News of the riches spread and a settlement quickly grew to exploit them. This included a police station and customs office, one of the first regional post offices, and the first short stretch of railway line in the colony, built to transport guano to the beach. Numerous ships anchored nearby to load the harvests. For a brief time, Cape Cross became the busiest economic location in the German colony. Yet the guano was depleted by 1903 and the settlement soon stagnated. Only sealing continued intermittently, and a small annual quota is still harvested today under the auspices of the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources.

Activities

Conservations

To stand at Cape Cross, looking out across one of the largest seal colonies along the southern African coast, and consider that the first Europeans known to have set foot on these shores landed here over 500 years ago – and apparently did not encounter any seals – puts our environmental outlook into perspective. Conservation must be seen in the context of history.

It’s impossible to accurately reconstruct the population numbers of Cape fur seals prior to the start ofcommercial utilisation, which began over 400 years ago. Massive exploitation of the seals, as well as of whales, soon led to population crashes. The estimated number of Cape fur seals had plummeted below 100,000 animals prior to 1900. This finally led to formal protection by the Cape Colony in 1893.

While whale populations have struggled to recover, seals have made an astounding comeback. Protected from human disturbance, a number of mainland seal colonies soon developed. After the discovery of diamonds near Lüderitz in 1908, the southern coast of South West Africa was declared a restricted area with no public access, enabling the establishment of several seal colonies here.

Cape Cross, far away along the infamous Skeleton Coast, was already well established by the late 1800s. New colonies developed at Kleinsee in northern South Africa, and at Atlas Bay and Wolf Bay in southern Namibia between the 1930s and 1950s. These four sites are currently the largest colonies, although other sites along the Namibian coast appear to be rapidly increasing. There are now around 40 breeding colonies in southern Africa, with about 25 of them in Namibia.

Significant growth of the overall seal population occurred between the 1950s and 1990s. Numbers have been considered relatively stable for the last 25 years. The current population is estimated at around two million animals, which is seen by many as a full recovery of the species.

The Cape fur seal is now listed as a ‘species of least concern’ by the IUCN, and is one of the most abundant seals on the planet. It is the only resident seal in Namibian waters, although vagrants of other species are occasionally recorded.

The seal population is monitored in a variety of ways, including tracking the movements of individual seals. Surveys are conducted at all larger breeding colonies using aerial photographs to count the numbers of seal pups, which are extrapolated to arrive at total population estimates. The censuses have been done intermittently for close to 50 years, though less consistently in recent years.

For Namibia’s seals, finding food has become one of the biggest challenges. The reduction of fish stocks through more than half a century of overfishing by man has left Namibian waters depleted. Pilchard, once the seal’s main food source, has been reduced to less than 10 per cent of historic numbers. Seals have had to shift their diet to other small fishes, and are moving farther north along the southern African coast, deep into Angolan waters. Pelagic goby, which is not targeted by commercial fisheries, is currently their main prey.

Map

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Naute Game Park

In a way itâ€™s refreshing when a wonderful little sanctuary remains beyond our hunger for leisure destinations. While Nauteâ€™s tourism potential remains unrealised, the game park does fulfil its conservation function.