Dear Editor,

As an avid sports fisherman I have frequented the Anaraika and Rockstone areas with my friends for over forty years. The beauty, serenity and pristine nature of the sandbanks, creeks and river may now be a memory. The joy of hooking a beautiful fighting lukanani on a fly, or reeling up a reluctant basha or skeet from the deep may soon be lost.
What is prevalent now are numerous river dredges scattered up and down, tail ends of sediment in channels which were once clear, dredges being fabricated at Rockstone Landing with sparks from arc-welding and sounds of hammer against steel way into the night.

The sediment is everywhere. Effluent is being dumped into the river. Bait fish can no longer breathe and die, and the fish will move or die. Litter is left indiscriminately on once clean white sandbanks.

Add to this insult, the numerous ‘camps’ that have sprung up behind Anaraika with scantily clad girls – not that I have any objection to scantily clad girls plying a trade that they know best. Plus the added insult of poisonous mercury and diesel oil, etc, on all wildlife and humans. I am afraid all those who shout from high about tourism, Rockstone Festival, fishing regulations and enforcing whatever mining or environmental regulations may be in place are in another world. They have turned a blind eye for maybe a handout from the transgressors of our pristine rivers and creeks.

I vividly recall ‘The Dying River – Konawaruk.’

Will they look, listen and enforce?

Yours faithfully,
Dr K Mangal