Greater Zandvlei Estuary Nature Reserve
In and around the Reserve - 2011.
09/12/2011 - A braai for the Reserve staff by the Zandvlei Trust Exco.
photograph by Sharon McCallum
The group photo, see who they are.......
23/09/2011 - The Zandvlei
Nature Reserve staff held a get together with the
new 14/01/2012.
Muizenberg Parks Dept to thank them for their continued assistance with the offices and with general work around the Zandvlei area.
They were presented with a certificate and a bakkie load of plants to take home for their gardens which were donated by the Cape Flats Fynbos Nursery.
We look forward to continuing the relationship and working together with the Muizenberg City Parks Dept in 2012.
photograph supplied by Cassy Sheasby.
The get together at the Parks Dept Muizenberg for the Certificate hand over ceremony.
28/09/2011 - A fire was started on 25/09/2011 on the western side of Zandvlei between the railway line and the vlei in the afternoon. The Fire Services were quick to respond.
photograph by Jeremy Main
Dowsing the vegetation down.
photograph by Jeremy Main
Checking to make sure all smouldering is put out.
photograph by Jeremy Main
From the end of Lakeside Station platform.
18/07/2011 - Madiba Day - 67 mintues of voluntary civil society work to help the Reserve Staff.
The Mountain Men Team arriving at the Zandvlei Nature Reserve.
01/07/2011 - A little more work has been done on the "new offices" during the rainy days.
Eddie has started with the floor tiles when he had some spare time. It is all a work in progress, which has to be applauded.
Have you ever heard of any employee
having to physically build his or her own working space, with no budget,
training or acknowledgment of what has been achieved to date? This over and
above what they are answerable for in their employed capacity. Suburban Nature
Conservation is a 24 hour occupation.
It is a ridiculous state of affairs.
One of the offices - Eddie had been working earlier, helping to lay the carpet tiles, Margit admiring the handy work. The cardboard boxes are for walking on as it was raining outside with plenty of mud.
The main meeting room to be, looking much smarter with the blue carpet.
13/06/2011 - Cassy reports
"Edwin Genade, the Principal Facilities
Officer,
Sports and Recreation for City of Cape Town, and his team of 20 removed 200 black bags of litter from Park Island in one day
- this is the amount that can wash down after one large storm. Just after this cleaning took place another surge brought another massive amount of litter down to Park Island, we are going to try to clean some of this up this week.
I have calculated, we would need R850 000 per year to employ staff to only manage litter in and around Zandvlei. This is above and beyond Talcott Persent’s contractors who clean the channels and litter
traps".
"On the 14/06/2011 we also employed 4 people from The Link that Gerrard Wigram and I paid for and they collected 20 black bags from Park Island and Wildwood Island".
photograph by Edwin Genade
The 200 bags of litter removed from Park Island on 13/06/2011.
01/06/2011 - Morella the Corn Snake has a new home. Oliver and Eddie finished the new display cabinet in May, before Oliver completed his stay at Zandvlei Nature Reserve.
photograph by Cassy Sheasby.
The new cabinet and Morella settling in.
20/04/2011 - This Loggerhead Turtle was found on Muizenberg beach. We named it George before taking it to the 2 Oceans Aquarium, who have another named Doug.
photograph supplied by Oliver Koerting
Oliver with the Loggerhead Turtle
28/01/2011 - This article about the proliferation of Egyptian Geese appeared in the Tygerburger Newspaper this last week and is applicable to the Zandvlei area as well.
Click on the thumbnail to enlarge.
22/01/2011 Cassy reports - The litter cleanups at Zandvlei take place all along the shore line and around the recreational areas.
Do you think that 1 black bag does not hold a lot of litter?
Perhaps if you are filling up bags with 2 litre cola bottles, it might not be that much, however think about this:
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At Zandvlei litter is sorted while it is collected into re-cycleables and non re-cycleables.
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Black bags are used for non recycleable litter,
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Clear bags are used for recycleable litter. Therefore, our black bags do not contain plastic bottles which tend to take up quite a large amount of volume.
Now think about a standard small size chip packet. While you have this in your mind, try to imagine how many empty chip packets you could fit into a black bag! Once you have filled the black bag, you can compress the contents quite a bit - the black bag doesn’t weigh much, but it can hold enough chip packets to heavily litter an area 100m squared!
Now think about other types of litter that we find a lot of at Zandvlei: individually wrapped sweet wrappers come to mind - how many of these can you fit into a black bag!
Large pieces of debris are not put into black bags but are stockpiled and taken away by the bakkie load to the landfill site at a cost.
Zerilda Primary and Steenberg Primary Schools into action in June 2010 they filled 40 bags with litter from the shore of the Nature Reserve. Well done to you guys. Thanks to Mark Arendse for organising this event.
Glass bottles are kept separate from normal recycling and dropped at the Main Road, Lakeside glass recycling bins which helps to raise money for the Zandvlei Trust projects.
What does it take to do an effective litter cleanup:
The Staff have to be dedicated to the cause.
Consider some of the equipment required:
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Uniform,
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Gum boots / field boots,
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Gloves,
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Safety glasses for reed beds,
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Disinfectant and first aid kits
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Canoes (if doing waterbourne litter),
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Safety jackets,
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Wheelbarrows and quad bikes for remote areas with no vehicle access route,
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Black bags,
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Vehicle transport and fuel,
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Landfill card and disposal budget,
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Time - at what cost!!
Did you know?
City of Cape Town Biodiversity branch is now looking at immunizing some of their staff against Hepatitis A in some water areas, where a risk may occur!
Here is a short list of the variety of things that have washed up along our shores and come down our rivers:
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Beds
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Mattresses
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Couches
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Buckets
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Crates
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Carpets
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Kettles
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Washing machines
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Whole Pool pumps
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Television sets
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Car bumpers
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Irrigation piping
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Wooden planks
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Broom sticks
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Golf balls, tennis balls, cricket balls
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Spinning tops (very common!)
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Syringe needles
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Asthma pumps and refills
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Shoes
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Childrens toys
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Plastic of all sorts
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Dead dogs
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Dead mole rats
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Dead fish
Totals transported by the Reserve Staff for the landfill site and recycling for 2010.
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388 Black bags litter and weeds
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41 black bags recycling
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6 sugar bags recycling
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10 bakkie loads litter and weeds
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1 bakkie load tyres
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2 bakkie loads reeds
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1 truck load hyacinth
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2 truck loads brush and weeds.
In and around the Reserve in 2010.
In and around the Reserve in 2009.
In and around the Reserve in 2008.
In and around the Reserve in 2007.
In and around the Reserve in 2006.
In and around the Reserve in 2005.
In and around the Reserve in 2004.
In and around the Reserve in 2003.
In and around the Reserve in 2002.
