Zandvlei Trust

The Greater Zandvlei Estuary Nature Reserve

A working partnership with the City of Cape Town and The Zandvlei Trust.

The People who make it happen.

Cassy Sheasby                           Mark Arendse                         Edward Moses 
Manager                                      Environ. Education Manager      Foreman

Margit van Heerden
Student
Read about her project funding requirement.
new 09/06/2010

Contact   Cassy Sheasby    The Manager – Greater Zandvlei Estuary Nature Reserve.

Contact   Mark Arendse      The Manager  – Environmental Education Centre.

Contact  a Staff member

ph/fax     021 701 7542

Ode to Marisa de Kock

See the tribute.

Cassy being capped at her graduation ceremony by Trevor Manuel in April 2010,
at the Cape Technicon University. She graduated Cum Laude and top of her class.

The Environmental Resource Management Department pay tribute to Ms Basson.

photograph by Cassy Sheasby

Past students paying tribute to their mentor Ms Basson (2nd row ,seated 8th from left).

On 7th December our Branch had a farewell get together for Ms Basson, the head of the Biodiversity and Conservation department of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology who is retiring from the position in June 2010.

Ms Basson has spent her life teaching conservation and promoting the work that we do in an urban conservation context. A large number of the top conservators in Cape Town have come from the teachings of Ms Basson and are the current and future managers of our remaining ecological treasures.

We had a morning to honour the amazing contribution that Ms Basson has made to conservation and teaching it as a way of life, not just a career, also instilling the strictest conservation ethics and best practice principles. She is passionate about it and became a god mother to most of us, often sharing experiences (good and bad) with her, achievements and lessons learnt from failures.

We all wish her well on her retirement from the CPUT and thank her for the amazing influence that she has had on our lives.

How to get to the Nature Reserve and the Environmental Education Centre.

(click on the map to enlarge the photo)

The entrance gates are open.

From the trial run it has been decided to do a quarterly Open Day event.

31 July 2010  new 01/08/2010

See a report from the first "Open Saturday" at the Reserve in December 2009.

Background information

Many people think that the staff working at the Greater Zandvlei Estuary Nature Reserve are Cape Nature employees. Cape Nature is the provincial authority for provincial nature reserves. Zandvlei is a proclaimed local authority nature reserve, meaning it is a City of Cape Town property.
Your rates pay for the infrastructure and the annual running of all the 24 official City of Cape Town Nature Reserves within the Metropole. These reserves fall under the Environmental Resourse Management Department and the staff manage the biodiversity of these valuable assests for Cape Town, the Western Cape and South Africa. These Reserves contain some of the last remaining, threatened, natural botanical areas in the fynbos biome.

Any improvements in capital and operating budgets are dependent on how strong the lobby is for environmental management - finance allocation. The proportion is determined from the 5 year IDP (Intergrated Development Policy) inputs.
The policy is open for annual public comment, on how "our rates should be spent". 

The formal way is to let your Ward Councillor know your views.  Daily and weekend newspapers advertise for public input when it is up for review. You are encouraged to submit a written reply.

Buy a copy of this quality, informative A5 book with 65 pages, in full colour on environmentally friendly paper from any  ZVT Exco members. . All about the Nature Reserves of Cape Town, for only  R15.
You will be supporting the Nature Reserves.

Fishing at Zandvlei

2009 - 2010 Marine Recreational Activity - Information Brochure.

The brochure is by the Dept of Environmental Affairs.

If you plan to fish at Zandvlei, you will need to have a marine permit (available at the post office) and note that only lines and rods are allowed, netting with any type of net within the boundary of Greater Zandvlei Estuary Nature Reserve is prohibited. The bag sizes and daily limits are listed in the brochure.

It has plenty of other interesting information as well.

Download the brochure (109KB .pdf)

1. In and around the Reserve.   updated 25/08/2010

photograph supplied by Cassy Sheasby

Cassy delivering her paper at the Fynbos Forum 
on Cape Spurfowl and Helmeted Guineafowl.

Click to see whats happening in and around the Reserve.

2. Environmental Education Centre. 

photograph by Corinna Keup 

Corinna teaching the children not to litter alongside
the Sand River.

Click to see more at the EE Centre.

Download this information booklet, for a Mini SASS course or community monitoring water quality.
It is part of the River Health for Southern Africa.

1. Fay's Karoo Robin project.                          1. Andrew's Kedstes Butterfly project.

2. Fay's  Waxberry (Morella Cordifolia)          2. Andrew's  Healing Plant Poster project 
   rehabilitation project.

1. Cassy's African Catfish project.

Click to read the Cape Bird Club's history at Zandvlei.

A bird count record from an April 1994 Zandvlei Trust Newsletter.

photograph by Cathy Hannay

Malachite Kingfisher

Do you know?

You can contribute to;

• the BIRP (Birds in Reserves Project) run by ADU (Animal Demographic Unit) (link above on icon) based at the University of Cape Town.
• By doing so you as a "citizen scientist" are helping to establish local and national species information and contribute to bird conservation.
• The process is fairly simple; volunteers go out to any PA (protected area - Greater Zandvlei Estuary Nature Reserve) and simply make a list of all the bird species observed. Data can be collected up to a maximum of seven days.

Please start at Zandvlei and record all the birds you see and submit them via the data gathering process. For more information go the the BIRP website, as above. Please download the BIRP instruction booklet which contains all the relevant information pertaining to this project.

The project is supported and endorsed by both the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) as well as BirdLife South Africa (BLSA). Click on the logos for the links.

Marius Wheeler  is the Project Co-ordinator. tel 021 650 4698.

Data

The following tables / records are published on a regular basis, so as to build up a central source of data. This will assist anyone who is interested in Zandvlei;