Welcome

Thirty-eight years ago, a small group of local residents decided that Zandvlei was worth fighting for. Not because someone told them to. Not because there was funding waiting. Because they looked at Zandvlei, its fauna, flora, and realised it had to be protected.

There is no other estuary like this one on the False Bay coastline. Zandvlei is it — the last functioning estuarine ecosystem in False Bay

The significance of Zandvlei cannot be underestimated, it is a fish nursery, a bird refuge, a water filtration system processing the runoff from tens of thousands of urban households and farms, and a home to endangered species that have nowhere else to go.

This past year, the Trust delivered more project work, reached more people, and invested more capital into Zandvlei than in any recent years. All of it achieved through volunteer effort and the generosity of our members and supporters.

And this is why we are here tonight, to continue to operate as a civil-society, volunteer-driven and apolitical organisation, guided by our founding mission: to protect and conserve the Zandvlei Estuary Nature Reserve, and to enhance the indigenous fauna and flora of this natural resource for the benefit of all.

Zandvlei is under pressure, every day.

The Sand and Langvlei River catchments flow through farms and densely populated suburbs before they reach the vlei.

What gets thrown in the streets, washed into the drains, dumped on the riverbanks it all ends up here.

The primary threats we see for Zandvlei are:

• Solid waste and plastic pollution entering the vlei via the many canals
• Invasive alien vegetation
• Deteriorating water quality from urban and farming runoff;
• Habitat degradation and loss of green corridors across areas;
• Lack of awareness and education of the reserve’s biodiversity value.

Against this backdrop, the Trust ran 15 projects in 2025, across four pillars:

Conservation, Community, Education, Research and Citizen Science.

None of these were funded by government. All of it was driven by people and organisations who chose to show up.

Projects

Sand River Litter Traps

David Bristow

Nets maintained; one 6yr net replaced; pilot metal-grid installation lost in floods but upgraded with steel-cable anchors

Litter Programme (Fish Bins, Litter Traps, Glass Bins)

David Bristow and Elfriede Webb

Weekly collection maintained; ~20 bags/week in winter, ~10 bags/week in summer

Westlake Garden

Damian Gibbs and David Bristow

Block A fully cleared and replanted; Block B cleared and ready for indigenous planting

Boyes Drive Hacking

Karen Hart and team

Monthly alien vegetation clearing on Muizenberg mountain slopes continues

Row Play Park

Dale Lawrence and Campbell Tyler

500m² cleared and planted with 750 plants and 1,000+ cuttings of Cape Flats Dune Strandveld and Cape Lowland Freshwater Wetland species; strong survival rate through a short rainy season; play equipment refurbished (swings, merry-go-round, see-saws repainted; rusted slide removed); 30+ community volunteers participated in planting; ZVT sponsorship signage erected

Photo Competition and Calendar

Damian Gibbs

2026 calendar competition held; 12 winning images selected

Citizen Science / iNaturalist

Damian Gibbs

iNaturaist training event held by Darren November

Finances

Total income for the nine months ended 31 December 2025 was R186,107 against expenditure of R146,273, netting surplus of R39,834.

Significant payments made during the period:

R57,500 to fund Row Playpark Phase 2, and R50,000 to the Mapula Trust for Environmental Education.

The Treasurer’s full report and audited statements will be presented separately.

Weekly Litter Collection Efforts

Taking a closer look at litter management which remains the Trust’s biggest and challenging task, environmentally, socially and logistically. The Sand River nets and grates is our relentless and most unglamorous commitment as a first line of defence to litter pouring into Zandvlei.

This intervention is estimated to intercept about 300 cubic metres of solid waste annually. For those who work in South African cubic measuring system, that’s about 250 bakkie loads, almost 5 per week, one a week day.

After two years of flood failures, the Trust has installed an interlocking metal-grate system with steel-cable anchors.

Nylon nets face a constant barrage of plastic waste, logs, furniture, appliances, car parts and worse, require ongoing maintenance, cleared weekly by a council sub-contractor, with the Trust maintaining backup capacity.

Our three ‘litter fish’ bins, positioned at each end of Thesen’s footbridge and at the Wildwood Island entry, are cleared and maintained on a regular schedule, with bags collected by the Nature Reserve team.

The glass recycling bins on the Lakeside road reserve, one of the Trust’s oldest projects, has been withdrawn after persistent abuse rendered them counterproductive.

Partnerships

The Zandvlei Trust does not work in isolation. Our projects are designed to complement and extend the capacity of the Zandvlei Nature Reserve management and we maintain active working relationships with the following organisations:

City of Cape Town (ZNR Management)	Joint project delivery for Row Play Park and Westlake Garden
Cape Bird Club	Assist with bird count days at Zandvlei
Zandvlei Protected Areas Advisory Committee (ZPAAC)	Advisory committee membership
Muizenberg Improvement District (MID)	Co-funder of Thesen’s Bridge and Henley Road Park restoration
Orchard Village Restoration	Supported river clean-up
Ingcungcu Gardens	Generous budget contribution to Thesen’s Bridge
Green Muizenberg	Co-hosted World Beach Clean-up Day 2025
Karen Hart / Boyes Drive Team	Monthly alien-clearing operations on Muizenberg mountain slopes
Zandvlei Catchment Forum	ZVT Exco representation

Community Reach and Awareness

Beyond the physical restoration projects, the Trust maintained a regular programme of community engagement, public education and awareness-raising:

• First Saturday events: weather permitting rotated between litter cleanups, garden restoration
• Environmental education programme through ZENR: 8 sessions delivered reaching 141 children and 49 adults.
  Programmes were run with Sullivan Primary and the Youth Environmental Cubs Club was launched (11 children, ages 7–12).
• Spring Talks series presented in September 2025 at The Lookout, Lakeside: free public admission and very well received.
• 2026 Zandvlei calendar photo competition: entries from adult and junior photographers; 12 winning images published in fundraising calendar
• Reserve nature walks led by ZNR staff: July 2025 (27 participants; Stacy-Anne Michaels) and November 2025 (Kyran Wright; highlights included sightings of the critically endangered Kedestes lenis lenis skipper butterfly).
• World Beach Clean-up Day 2025: joint event with Green Muizenberg
• Marine Estate Open Gardens (October 2025): nine private gardens in the Marine Estate area opened to the public, organised by Naomi Porter. Entrance fees were donated to the Trust. The event demonstrated the growing connection between the Marine Estate community through the Row Play Park restoration work, and the wider Zandvlei mission, this is a model of neighbourhood-level conservation ownership that we hope to build on.

Social Media

The Trust’s social media presence grew substantially.

On Facebook, the past year generated over 400,000 views, an 82% increase in engagement and 18% increase in followers to approximately 2 300.

Our Instagram account has also significantly grown with reaching to about 1 000 accounts, predominantly in the 25–35 age group.

Our posts regularly reach beyond just our follower base with a recent post reaching over 31,000 people, the majority of whom were not followers.

The Comment sections have become a meaningful channel for environmental education: followers regularly pose substantive questions about the reserve’s ecology, history and conservation challenges.

This shows that there is a real interest in Zandvlei from audiences beyond South Africa, stretching to UK, Germany and Zimbabwe.

Challenges

The Trust operates with a small volunteer committee and no full-time conservation staff. While we might see the projects we are working on around Zandvlei as admirable, it is not with out some operational risks and challenges:

• Litter trap infrastructure failure: one Sand River net (6 years old) broke and required urgent replacement; the pilot interlocking metal-grid system was lost during winter floods when anchor ropes snapped, steel-cable anchors have been reinstalled
• Municipal contractor reliability: the partnership with city supplier for litter-net clearing is an improvement but not at all dependable; ZVT maintains backup clearing capacity
• Dependency on volunteerism: all committee members serve in a voluntary capacity for administrative and many physical tasks; there are many opportunities to make a greater impact but would take dedicated staff and funding
• Water quality deterioration: The catchment remains a systemic risk beyond the Trust’s direct control; Prof Winter’s Spring Talk highlighted the scale of the challenge
• Vital knowledge gaps: water quality monitoring in the Zandvlei Catchment; what constitutes the sediment in Zandvlei and its sources, this is a critical area for research

Looking Ahead

The Trust’s programme for 2026 involves building on expanding out projects and some new projects.

• Sand River litter-trap upgrade: steel-cable anchor installation and system reliability improvement
• Henley Road Park: joint venture with MID to improve the equipment and ecological restoration
• Thesen’s Bridge: more resotoration by creating a critical link between east and west Zandvlei restoration corridors
• Westlake Garden: indigenous planting scheduled for the next section
• Dog Waste Composting Pilot: implementation at Row Play Park
• Education and Citizen Science: post-graduate research funding around sedimentation and water quality in Zandvlei and the catchment

We need your support

We are going to be direct. Zandvlei needs more resource than a volunteer committee can provide alone.

The ecological pressure is growing.

The opportunities — more restoration, more education, more research — are right in front of us.

What is missing is sustained funding.

Just to be clear, The Zandvlei Estuary Nature Reserve is a proclaimed protected area managed by the City of Cape Town and the Trust works alongside the City’s reserve management team extending their reach, amplifying their capacity, and advocating for the reserve’s long-term health.

This distinction matters when we talk about partnership. We of course cannot offer any rights to a public asset. Howeve, what we can offer is something less transactional and, we think, more enduring: a genuine stake in the work.

If you or or your organisation, or your employees care about Cape Town’s coastline, its catchment water systems, its biodiversity, or the communities that live alongside them, then there is real and meaningful work to be done here and we would value your support to do more of it.

The problems Zandvlei faces are not small and challenges a volunteer committee can solve alone.

Funding the Trust is not a sponsorship transaction. It is a decision to put your organisation’s resources behind a community that has chosen to take responsibility for a place that belongs to all of us.

In return, we will keep you informed, involve you where it makes sense, acknowledge your contribution publicly, and most importantly make sure your money reaches the ground, or water.

As a wrap, here’s what we’re working on and where support makes the most difference

AREA	CURRENT NEED	NATURE OF THE WORK
Habitat restoration	Thesen’s Bridge (3,800m²), Henley Road, Westlake Garden	Invasive clearing, indigenous planting, community volunteer coordination in collaboration with ZNR
Litter interception	River catchment and storm water litter-trap systems	Engineering, maintenance and clearing of the primary barrier between urban catchment and the vlei
Environmental education	School programme, Youth Environment Club	Connecting people to the reserve — holiday programmes, field visits, citizen science expeditions
Community engagement	First Saturdays events, nature walks, Spring Talks, photo competition	Building the base of people who know and care about Zandvlei
Research and monitoring	Catchment water and sediment analysis, biodiversity monitoring and research	Research to update and expanding knowledge about Zandvlei and catchment; student-led with university and college partnership
Operational continuity	Committee support, administration	The Trust runs entirely on volunteer time; any funded capacity multiplies what we can deliver

Acknowledgements

The 2025 years achievements are the result of the sustained effort of a large number of individuals who give their time without remuneration. I wish to thank:

• The Executive Committee – Dr David Walker, Dale Lawrence, Kate Gray, Annamia van den Heever, Elfriede Webb, Mitzi Ellemers, David Bristow, Lauri-Anne Veitch and Campbell Tyler – for their commitment, energy and expertise throughout the year;
• Karen Hart and her team, for uninterrupted monthly alien-clearing operations on the Boyes Drive slopes;
• Stacy-Anne Michaels, for her appointment as our Community Liaison Officer and the energy she has brought to the education programme;
• Lisa O’Malley (ZNR intern), Stacy de Jager and Kyran Wright (ZNR), for leading education and nature-walk activities;
• Darren November and the ZENR team for all they do that we don’t see or hear.
• Hannes Kok, Anthony MacLennan and the Orchard Village restoration team;
• William, Geoffrey, Blair, Wilson, Peter, Robert, Russel, Cuma, Mzwanele, and Amoss – the ground teams whose consistent work transformed the Westlake Garden, Row Play Park and the start of Thesen’s Bridge;
• All our speakers at the 2025 Spring Talks – Dalton Gibbs, Prof Kevin Winter, Patrick McKenna, and David Muller stirring rendition of Whale Nation;
• The Muizenberg Improvement District, Ingcungcu Gardens and the ZENR management team for their collaboration on the Thesen’s Bridge project;
• Our event sponsors: Pam Golding, BDS Steward;
• On going donations: Plastics SA;
• Naomi Porter and the Marine Estate community, for organising the Open Gardens event and for embracing the Trust’s work in the Row Play Park area with such energy and generosity;
• Every member who paid their subscription, members and non-members who donated, attended a First Saturday, picked up a piece of litter, or told someone else about Zandvlei.

Conclusion

The Zandvlei Trust enters its 38th year with a broader project portfolio, a strengthened community programme, and a more structured approach to managing our projects and project funding.

The ecological pressure on Zandvlei has not diminished, but neither has the resolve of the Zandvlei Trust members and partners to push back against it.

We invite all members, partners and prospective funders to engage with us directly. Every Rand we raise is deployed directly back into Zandvlei. Every hour volunteered is an hour the Zandvlei would not otherwise have had.

Zandvlei is not just a public amenity, a convenient spot for a lekker braai or a pleasant walk, though it is those things too, and they matter very much. It is a functioning, living estuary: a fish nursery, a water filtration system, a refuge for species that have no other home on this coastline.

What makes Zandvlei extraordinary is what makes it vulnerable: everything that flows through the Sand-Langvlei River and Keyser river catchments, our streets, our gardens, our stormwater drains, ends up here.

So how we look after Zandvlei and the catchment is a statement about who we are as a community and what we value.

The Zandvlei Trust does not own Zandvlei, but we hold it in trust – for the citizens of Cape Town, for the animals that depend on it, in honour of the first people shared in its abundance, and for the people who will inherit whatever condition we leave it in.

This is not a burden. It is the point.