City celebrates River Warden graduates

29 October 2025

The City’s Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment, Alderman Eddie Andrews joined the City’s Biodiversity Management branch this week to recognise a group of River Wardens who recently completed a FET certificate in Nature Conservation (NQF 4 qualification). The River Warden Skills Development Programme is one of the City’s most successful skills development programmes and has enabled the City to employ 57 of the participants since its inception. The investment into the formal education of these individuals was made possible through funding from the National Lottery and facilitated by Nature Connect.

The City is building a pipeline of practically skilled conservation practitioners who strengthen the City’s operational capacity through the River Warden Skills Development Programme. This programme is one of the Mayor’s priority projects and honours the protection of wetlands by empowering individuals from marginalised groups within low-income communities surrounding City nature reserves, with experience in conservation-based stewardship.

This programme improves the health of the city’s ecosystems and creates pathways to vital employment opportunities in the environmental management sector. These individuals stem from communities surrounding the False Bay Nature Reserve (Zeekoevlei, Rondevlei and Strandfontein sections); Zandvlei Nature Reserve; Edith Stephens Nature Reserve and Table Bay Nature Reserve.

The graduates have thus far assisted with the following environmental management activities:

• River health assessments
• Invasive species management
• Community clean-ups
• Data collection
  

‘Each of these graduates come from communities neighbouring our nature reserves. We see them as local champions - individuals who can monitor ecosystems, educate their neighbours and contribute to the City’s biodiversity goals, all while caring for their own natural surroundings,’ said the City’s Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment, Alderman Eddie Andrews.

To date, the programme has made the following impact:

• Cleared 10 184 bags and 10 tonnes of solid waste removed from river systems
• Cleared 7 275 bags and 22,5 tonnes of invasive species from the Sand, Zeekoe and Diep River catchments
• Built relationships with 20 schools surrounding these river systems in order to drive awareness among these learners
• Completed 5 000 hours of community engagement activities



‘We believe that these graduates have the potential to become future conservation leaders and, going forward, their true test will be their ability to combine technical expertise with social understanding, so working with people as much as with nature.

‘With continued partnerships between the City, NGOs like Nature Connect, and community leaders, Cape Town can lead the way as a global example of urban biodiversity stewardship,’ said Andrews.

Caption 1: City’s River Warden staff; Alderman Eddie Andrews and some team members from the City’s Environmental Management Department at the graduation ceremony for the River Wardens who completed their FET certificate in Nature Conservation.
Caption 2 and 3: City River Wardens, assisting with freshwater sampling in the wetland pools at the Rondevlei section of the False Bay Nature Reserve. This formed part of the City’s efforts in mapping the wetlands and was an opportunity to expose both the reserve and River Warden staff to a freshwater ecologist.




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Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office