Hi Community

A while ago I put out a request for us for the community to donate old buckets to us for use on our new fenceline,

We did receive one small donation (thanks!), however not enough buckets to cover all of our fence posts. We therefore used a different method, namely black plastic sheeting cut into squares, to prevent the seepage of concrete into the surrounding soils (which could be harmful to frog species on site). This has worked very well.

A big thank you from our side for those who responded to our request? Thanks!

and the poplar trees??

Many people were horrified to see several poplar trees cut down along the Peninsula Road fenceline. Apologies from management side for not communicating this activity to our neighbours at the time, as this would have eased many concerns. We had intended to remove these poplar trees at some stage due to them being exotic to the site, but have so far not had resources to do so. A contractor came to install a new fenceline for us along Peninsula & Victoria Roads recently & the trees were hindering them from placing our new 2.4m high fence properly, therefore they were obliged to cut the trees in order to complete their job order for us. While we had not planned to clear the trees this year, this decision was a necessary one for the fence construction to proceed & then simultaneously helped us carry out one of our alien clearing objectives without any additional cost to our budget.

No birds were breeding in the trees at the time of their removal & we have kept the cut trees to potentially use them as roosting / nesting spots for birds next to the wetland area if feasible.

The remaining poplar trees will be removed at a later stage in the future. Alien trees such as these poplars can lower the ground water table through drawing excess water & they alter the surrounding soils through adding additional leaf litter to the area (i.e. enriching the soils with nutrients). The vegetation type found along Peninsula / Victoria Road is predominantly Cape Flats Sand Fynbos vegetation, which occurs on nutrient-poor soils, and the site also contains seasonal wetlands. By continuing to keep exotic tree species, it will therefore have negative impacts on the survival of the natural vegetation by changing the surrounding habitat in terms of soil chemistry & affect the seasonal wetlands i.t.o. water tables.

Thanks very much,

Kind regards

Tamaryn Khan
Section Ranger

False Bay Nature Reserve – Rondevlei Section

Tel: 021 396 4283
Fax: 021 396 4291

Tamaryn.Allan@capetown.gov.za