Rosso Things to Do

From the Park’s point of view creating a road through the middle of the Park would be ecologically unsound, it would also complicate surveillance and the extra cost of an embankment four instead of one metre wide at the top would be huge. Moreover, maintenance costs would be prohibitive for a village of some 200 people. In spite of all these arguments a major conflict arose when a member of the Park staff with political ambitions, when questioned, assured the villagers that a road would be built on the embankment (and that the village would be supplied with electricity, drinking water, a mosque, etc.). The villagers removed the fencing of a 4 hectare plot of dune fixation and pasture restoration experiment, established with their help, to the north of the village and fenced off the sluicegate in the embankment during the flooding season. Signboards, threatening anyone who would try to open the sluicegate, were posted all along the fence. It took more than a month of apologies, the removal of the staff member and lots of meetings with notables and high level administrators to dissipate the distrust and to be allowed to open the sluicegate.