The Cape Bird Club

MINUTES OF THE CAPE BIRD CLUB CONSERVATION COMMITTEE

Minutes of the meeting held on Monday 27 June 2011 at Dave’s house.

Present: Dave Whitelaw, Felicity Ellmore, Gavin Lawson, Stacy Anne Michaels, Doug Harebottle,
Shaun Overmeyer, Nneheleng Koali.

Apologies: Cliff Dorse, Suretha Dorse, Frank Wygold

1. Strandfontein - BLSA marketing committee are using Strandfontein as a prototype to see how they can approach businesses for funding. Cape Bird Club and the City are drawing up a memo of understanding between them to allow us to offer naming rights etc to the Corporate.

•  30 labourers have been appointed to manually remove the hyacinth. They will use the fibres to make furniture. They will remove the hyacinth in Sept, Oct, Nov, then dry out the pan. Barloworld have promised to help rebuild the island. If do this we can show business what we can do.
• We need to find out exactly what the IBA includes.
• False Bay Ecology Park - the steering committee had a meeting last week. Have received 26 million rand from Province for FBEP.
• Doug tried to phone Cecile, not got hold of her yet.

2. Paarden Eiland - Frank received a letter from the dept of Public Works, must be out by 30/6/11. Dave went with him to speak to the medical Superintendent at the hospital. He says Frank can stay there - he has no use for the area. Dave tried to get hold of the Dept of Public Works but can’t. He will try again tomorrow. He is actually helping Dept of Public Works by keeping vagrants away from the area.

• Dave will try and get hold of Dalton – there is place for him and his equipment at Strandfontein.

3. Raapenberg - Dave tried to get hold of James Cooper. Hasn’t yet.

• There is a management plan on the trup website, the last meeting Shaun went to the management plan was accepted.

4. Cerebos - Dave and Steve Lombard have been communicating, Dave has info that Gavin can put on the web.

5. Edith Stephens - Need to set dates for the next 6 months (2 outings). Doug will check which dates he is available to ring at Edith Stephens. What about Toyota organising something at the end of the year?

• There are 2 CBC courses coming up - there are places for 2 or 3 of Stacy’s students on each course.
• Edith Stephens is having a fishing day (catch and release) on 20 August 2011.
• The hyacinth is gone and the area is being monitored to make sure it doesn’t grow back.
• Stacy recently took the Hanover Park Civic Association to Zandvlei - the group included a partially sighted man. He says there is a place for partially sighted birders. He enjoyed the whole outing, just needed someones elbow to hold. Might be a type of outing CBC can help with.
• Shaun will get common bird calls on a CD for them.

6. Wind Farms - They are pushing for 12 months monitoring development. They are only interested in birds that are endangered for the bird sensitivity map, must look at the impact on all spp - especially ducks etc that fly in groups.

• There have been articles saying that we should be looking more at solar than wind power.

7. Penguins - sorted out finances (from the CBC) to buy plants for the area.

8. Driftsands N R - It is the only Cape Nature Reserve in the metro.

• Nneheleng thought that CBC could have an informal partnership with them for Driftsands. Need baseline data - maybe should organise outings there.
• Doug will check which BIRP cards have been done for the reserve.
• Dalton took a group of conservators to the reserve.
• Doug suggested that we use ADU’s digital biodiversity week and organise a group of people who are experts in butterflies, reptiles, atlasing etc and show people about the projects as well as collecting data for the reserve.Dug will speak to Les and they will come up with a plan of action. Nneheleng will organise a group of people from Cape Nature to join the experts. Can include Edith Stephens in the plan.
• Its possible that Driftsands staff could also get free tickets to the courses.

9. Fracking - Dave wants the CBC to write to the minister to say that SA should wait until the report from the states comes out before making a decision about fracking. Dave spoke to Vernon who said he should speak to Mark - Birdlife should write the letter. But Mark said that birds weren’t directly involved so its not a Birdlife issue.

10. Other - Shaun suggested that Gavin should summarise the City and Provincial Departments and what each one’s responsibility is. That would help the rest of us.

NEXT MEETING - Monday 15 August  2011 at Dave’s house.