the Taung Heritage Site and open to the public. To the west of the town, the Taung Dam was built in the Harts River. Upstream of the dam some rock engravings can be seen. History On 31 March 1902, during the final months of the Second Boer War, the Battle of Harts River, also known as "Battle of Boschbult", was fought between the Boers and the British forces near the confluence of the Harts River and the Brak Spruit, one of its dry tributaries. The battle was a British defeat and was also the second bloodiest day of that war for the Canadian forces, who fought on the British side. Mining Alluvial diamond mining still occurs in ancient river beds within the Harts River catchment area. The Newlands Mine is located some 60 km northwest of Kimberley on the river. It is currently being mined at a rate of 3000 tonnes per month by the company Dwyka Diamonds Limited. Noble Minerals, in cooperation with the local Ba-Ga-Maidi tribe has set up an operation to exploit the alluvial diamonds within 20 square kilometres of diamantiferous gravels of the river system, near Taung. Protected areas Most of the fish found in the Harts River are introduced species, except in the area of Barberspan, where indigenous species can be found. It was declared a nature reserve in 1949. Near the towns of Sannieshof and Delareyville, the river is connected to Barberspan (26°35' S 25°35' E), which lies partially inside the Barberspan Nature Reserve and is a Ramsar wetland site. The pan is 11 km long and 3.5 km wide, and it is named either after Frederick Hugh Barber FRGS, who hunted along the Harts River in 1875, or after the barbel (baber in the Afrikaans language), a species of catfish found in South African rivers. In 1913, Jan Christiaan Smuts, who owned a farm near the southern end of the pan, provided the labour and his foreman, Mr M. S. Basson, supervised the digging of a channel which diverted water from the Harts River into the pan, which lies about 9 m lower than the river. The area is so flat that the Harts River now pushes enough water into Barberspan during the rainy season to last through the dry winter months, where previously the pan used to dry up during the dry season. This was ecologically important, since the pan now became