FOTH
The Friends of the Tygerberg Hills
Registration Number: 043-526-NPO
Our Friends group was founded end of November 2002 with 15 members and at present we have 390 paid up members (Individual, senior citizen, family and corporate).
On the 29th of August 2005 we were registered as a Non profit organization with the department of social development. We have also received tax exemption from SARS.
We are affiliated to WESSA (Wildlife and environment society of South Africa), registered with City of Cape Town to participate in the newly established ward forums, represented on the Advisory board of Tygerberg, Durbanville and Bracken nature reserves
Who are the Friends?
We are ordinary people who are concerned about our environment and are prepared:
• To assist the local authorities with the protection of the unique biodiversity of the Tygerberg and Durbanville nature reserves and surrounding hills home to a wide variety of plants, animals and birds.
• To encourage greater public awareness especially of the much-threatened Renosterveld and helping to eradicate alien invasive species, for the benefit of present and future generations.
Anyone who endorses the objectives and constitution of the Friends is welcome to join us.
What do Friends do?
Helping the management of the reserves:
• By raising funds to finance various projects such as:
Water pump for mobile firefighting unit
Picnic tables (2)
Chest freezer for storage of dead animals
Telescope for environmental education
Tree cutting equipment
Rubbish bins (5)
Balaclava’s for fire fighters
Introduction of Grey Rheebok
Helping to sponsor salary as from January 2007 of one conservationist, Jacqueline Swart,
for the Tygerberg, Durbanville reserves and Uitkamp wetland area.
Carl Zeiss microscope for Tygerberg CREW group
Construction of wheelchair path c/w picnic tables
Snake handling equipment
Sponsor snake handling course for reserve staff
Sponsor electrical fence maintenance course for reserve staff
Sponsor equipment for Taxidermy course
Engineering equipment
Mounting of Caracal and Grysbokkie
Breeding pair of Grey Rhebok
Books for EE centre
Mist blowers to be used during controlled burns
To date the Friends have spent more than R85’000 to support the reserve.
• By lobbying companies to donate money or goods such as:
Street finders (26) for the firefighters based in the various nature reserves
Picnic tables (14)
Wheelchair path matting
The above donations approximate R42’000.
• We provided technical skills and approximately 1075 hours of manual labour to maintain hiking paths, fire breaks, making sign boards for the path’s in the Tygerberg nature reserve, construction of a 500m wheelchair path and our latest achievement the construction of a 10m long bridge on to the wall of the lower dam.
• We cut down and removed Alien vegetation such as Pine, Port Jackson, Bluegum and Rooikrans in and around the reserve. For this job you must be prepared to get sweaty, scratched and sometimes even wet.
Over the last 5 years The Friends have spent an estimated 1800 man hours clearing invasive aliens.
• By sharing our knowledge with other friend groups and visitors to the reserve.
• To educate youngsters from schools around the Cape Town area in environmental awareness
CREW who??
Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers, in short CREW, is a program that creates awareness of threatened plant species in South Africa. The program is jointly run by the South African Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and the Botanical Society of South Africa (BotSoc). South Africa has an incredible richness in biodiversity, but we also have so many species that are threatened with extinction!
At least eight percent of the 19 000 plant species that occur in South Africa are threatened with extinction and a further 12% are considered near threatened, data deficient or rare endemics.
CREW mainly works with volunteers, who collect point locality information on populations of threatened plants and also monitors these sites. This information is essential for sustainable biodiversity conservation planning and land-use decision-making.
The Tygerberg CREW group has been on going for several years. We started off as absolute novices, with almost no knowledge on plants. But with the help of the very dedicated CREW team from Kirstenbosch, I dare say we know a lot more than when we started off! We are by far no specialists in the botanical field, but have nurtured a core group of very enthusiastic amateur botanists, always ready to learn more and help each other gain more knowledge on plants.
Since the beginning of the year, we meet weekly for outings, usually on a Friday. These outings are mostly to sites that we visited before and where we continue monitoring the threatened populations found there previously. We have also started to work more systematically, by going back to sites, where threatened plants had been collected previously many years back. By doing so, we have found several populations of threatened plants even in Tygerberg Nature Reserve. Exact GPS localities, as well as other information relating to those threatened plants is then relayed back to the CREW office at Kirstenbosch.
We are currently also updating the species lists for Tygerberg Nature Reserve, Bracken Nature Reserve, as well as Uitkamp wetlands. The herbarium at Tygerberg is constantly being supplemented with specimens of species, as we find and collect more in the field. New photo albums have also been donated by Hedi Stummer and Bobby and Etienne De Villiers, so that the photo collection at Tygerberg can be rearranged to accompany the herbarium specimens. New pages can be added to the albums, allowing more photos to be added to our collection as we go on is thus not a problem anymore.
As you can see, we are quite busy! Our core group of volunteers is however still very small and we hardly get to all that needs to be done! If you are interested in helping us, may it be some extra eyes on field trips or some extra hands helping to sort the photos or mount new herbarium specimens. Enthusiasm and willingness to learn is all that is required!
If this sounds interesting to you, please contact Hedi Stummer at Tel: 021 558 3502 or mail me at estummer@mweb.co.za for further information.
Other activities
• Newsletter
We issue a quarterly newsletter “Viewpoint” with interesting articles on local environmental and botanical issues, past and future activities of the Friends to our members.
• Tygerberg hikers
If hiking in nature is what you like doing, please come and join the hiking club of the Friends of Tygerberg Hills. We are doing regular 3 hour hikes in and out of the reserve.
These hikes are advertised in the local press as well as in our newsletter.
Last year we started to organize hikes in the reserve for the Lighthouse walkers (Organisation for the blind).
This year we have already held four very successful sun set / full moon rise hikes for our members.
• Hack team
Our hack team is always willing to go and help other Friends groups (Bracken) to start their own hack groups, go and help Friends hack teams of other reserves (Helderberg, Blauuwberg, Bainskloof) or go and help resident organizations (Kenridge) to get rid of alien trees and shrubs on public open spaces or along rivers.
• Wine walks
The last 12 month we organized two walks from the Welgemoed entrance to the reserve on to Altydgedacht wine farm for a cellar tour followed by wine tasting, cheese and bread.
We intend to organize one wine walks per year to some of the wine farms in the Durbanville wine area.
These walks will be advertised in the local press as well as in our newsletter.
• Mountain bike fun ride
We help the Tygerberg mountain bike club to organise the annual fun ride in the reserve by providing marshals and helpers at the various waterpoints.
• Monthly presentation
On the first Tuesday of every month at 19h30 our guest speakers present an interesting talk with a botanical or environmental flavour.
These talks are advertised in the local press as well as in our newsletter.
Venue is the Kristo Pienaar EE Centre in the Tygerberg Nature Reserve.
• Firing the muzzle loading cannon
On various public holidays or on special occasions, our 4 fully trained cannonier’s Neville Potgieter, Erick Kellermann, Patrick Shannon and Jurg Zimmermann fire our 8pdr muzzle loading gun next to the Sentech mast in the Tygerberg nature reserve.
If you would like to know more about these guns, we can sell you the book “Muzzle loading cannons of South Africa”
The cannon can also be fired for special private occasions, such as weddings, birthdays etc. Contact Jurg on
083 701 8496 for more details.
• ULWAZI project
3 to 4 times a year we invite the youngsters from the ULWAZI project for the physically challenged to the Tygerberg or Durbanville reserves, it is always an eye opener for us volunteers to see the smile on the faces of these youngsters confined to their wheel-chairs, when we took them to the picnic site for sightseeing. Afterwards we wheeled them down hill to the centre where they learned about the birds and animals of the reserve, or helped decorating greeting cards and enjoyed some snacks and cool drinks.
After intensive lobbying by the Friends, the new wheel chair ramp was opened last year. Now they also have access through the main entrance to the Kristo Pienaar centre and need no more to be wheeled in through the back door.
• Wheelchair path
The friends work team finished the construction of the 500m long wheelchair path in the Tygerberg Hills nature reserve. The opening took place on Heritage Day 24 September 2008.
We have now started lobbying the City of Cape Town to provide a disabled and wheelchair friendly
Toilet at the entrance to the reserve.
• Bush dinner
Last year we hosted a very successful fund raising “bush dinner” at the Kristo Pienaar centre.
Lamb on a spit was accompanied by an assortment of red and white wines from the Durbanville wine area.
Land grabbing
Helping to keep away the last 3 to 4% of remaining Renosterveld from developers.
For more information you can contact the chairperson
Bill Wilson on: 083 675 7054 or e-mail docwil@wbs.co.za
