Zandvlei Trust

Source To Sea - exploring our Catchment with GIS

Group A – 28 April 2009

All the photographs supplied by Alice Ashwell.

This is an overview of the trail by Group A.

Group A's section of the trail with the GPS points indicated in red dots.

Participants.

 

Name	School / Org.
John Nyamunda   (Teacher)	Crestway
Suzanne Short     (Teacher)	Muizenberg
Jayd Scholtz	Bergvliet
Jason Hewitson	Bergvliet
Terri-Lee Tito	Bergvliet
Colyn Bourhill	Bergvliet
Lauren-Lee Solomons	Crestway
Riesaan Kenny	Crestway
Tashwin Bailey	Crestway
Rodwell Ndlovu	Muizenberg
Stephanie Bam	Muizenberg
Ville Vehmaa	Muizenberg
Anke Theron	Zwaanswyk
Grant Jaftha	Zwaanswyk
Harold Hendricks	Zwaanswyk
Minette Pieterse	Zwaanswyk
Patricia Holmes	Cof CT Biodiversity
Virgil Jacobs	Working for Wetlands
Sue Gie	Zandvlei Trust

Start

 We started near the Manor House in Tokai, with Leighan Mossop, the Manager for the central section of Table Mountain National Park taking us along the Princesskasteel River in the upper section of the Tokai plantation.

This is a gabion wall built from selected rocks and    This is the very sad state of the Manor House
formed into a wire mesh basket to hold the rocks in   the responsiblity of the Provincial Government
place. The objective is to prevent the river course      who have failed to maintain this historic house for
from receding further up the slope.                           more than 15 years. The building has been stripped
                                                                             of many fittings.

Some beautiful autumn leaves.                               Then we saw this new gabion being made

The new work of the gabion in the Princesskasteel   Then we went across Orpen Road into the lower Tokai
River.                                                                    plantation which has pine and gum trees.

This is an example of erosion and no buffer             Soetvlei looking north, part of a Working for Wetlands
between the trees and a natural water course.          restoration project, adjacent to a section of restored
                                                                            Sand Plain fynbos vegetation.

Virgil Jacobs the manager of the Peninsula            Then Pat Holmes,  City of Cape Town, Biodiversity
section of the Working for Wetlands project           Mangement explained the impressive restoration of
pointing out some palmiet which is an extremly        the Sand Plain fynbos in a section of the old
important plant to stabilise the soils, stones and      plantation, one of the few examples left on the planet.
rocks in a water course in the fynbos vegetation.

An example of exotic invassive Black Wattle in        Riesaan Kenny and Tashwin Bailey checking the
the right front corner. The bullrush in flower              notes and the rodent charts.
behind. These are indicator plants, they tell there
are excessive nutrients in this section of the vlei.

The rarest protea shrub in the fynbos biome.           Terri-Lee Tito and her teacher Suzanne Short.

Then we went down to this section of the Prinskasteel River. This is at the confluence of the Prins, Princess and Spaanschemat Rivers just west of the M3 freeway (Blue route) near the "Dead Bridge" which goes no where. This is where we did the SASS test to estblish the water quality by taking samples of living creatures in the mud silt and living on the plants in the water. The samples are caught in a net and emptied into trays. With charts to compare the groups and variety of macroinvertebrates we set about identifying as many as we could so we could conclude whether the water quality is acceptable or not.

A recently completed gabbion on the Prinskasteel   Leighan netting samples for the group. Ther is a
River.                                                                   standard documented method how to collect the
                                                                           sample.

Sue Gie a Zandvlei Trust member helping with the chart reading and identifying the creepy crawlies.

We were taken back to the Muizenberg pavillion for lunch and the report back.

For more information contact;

Ally Ashwell     021 788 2431
                       082 720 7444
                       www.enviroeds.co.za