On the 2 February 2015 the Deputy Minister of the Environment, Barbara Thompson, handed over a Ramsar certificate to the False Bay Nature Reserve.

The Ramsar convention was named after a town in Iran, where in 1971 an international convention was entered into between countries to conserve wetlands of international importance. The primary goal of the convention was to facilitate the conservation of migratory birds that travel across the globe, moving between their breeding grounds in the North and the summer grounds in the South. An example of such a bird this is a Little Stint, a small bird of only 40 grams that was rung at Rondevlei and then recovered just over 2 months later in Miskino, Southern Siberia. This is a distance of some 12 000km.

To date, 21 wetlands in South Africa have been designated with this honour, with False Bay becoming the 22nd. Other examples of Ramsar sites in the Western Cape are Verloerenvlei, Langebaan Lagoon and De Hoop Vlei.

In False Bay, our wetlands including Rondevlei, Zeekoevlei and the Strandfontein treatment ponds have all been designated and are now covered by the international convention. Each of the water bodies have differing zonings, with Rondevlei being dedicated to conservation, Zeekoevlei to recreation and Strandfontein to waste water treatment. All these differing functions are held together by the reserve management plan. Included along with these wetlands are the seasonal wetlands in the coastal dune, which are some of the last remaining examples of their type left. Numerous endangered species of fauna and flora are to be found at False Bay Nature Reserve, some found no where else.

The Ramsar designation is an additional layer of protection that “overlies” that of nature reserve and is the highest level that can be afforded to an area below that of a National Park. Otherwise put you may have to try really really (really) hard if you wanted to build for example a Toll road through it …

The process to obtain Ramsar designation began some 15 years ago and was initiated in the community by numerous residents, amongst others, Roger Godwin, Theo & Nicky Stock, Jimmy Baigrie, Richard Cammell, Dee Cranswick and Liz Day.  Our thanks go out to everyone involved.