People-centred urban conservation
Expand stewardship partnerships
Conservation inside a city holds when the people who live and work beside a site help pay for it. We manage and co-manage land across Cape Town, funded jointly by local government, residents, developers and donors.
Conservation around relationships
This past year, working with the Welgemoed City Improvement District, we brought Swartland Shale Renosterveld into the conservation portfolio. Restoration across parks, verges and islands was piloted to show how a civic partnership turns everyday urban space into actively managed biodiversity area.
The contractual agreements that keep this viable were strengthened with new support from legal partners ENS Africa, and annual increases were negotiated on almost all long-term agreements, reinforcing the financial base for site management, restoration and conservation staffing. Discussions are underway in Cape Town and Malmesbury to extend this onto new property developments.
The places we manage
Each of these sits inside the city, and each is funded by a different combination of people who live or work beside it.
Kenilworth Racecourse Conservation Area
Managed with Race Coast. Protects the last known population of the Critically Endangered Micro Frog in Cape Town. Our teams lead restoration, monitoring and guided walks on site.
Milnerton Racecourse Conservation Area
A section of Table Bay Nature Reserve. Co-funding from neighbouring residents associations lets us augment City conservation capacity, restoring habitat and monitoring critically endangered Cape Flats Sand Fynbos.
Zoarvlei, Table Bay Nature Reserve
A wetland worked with the Paarden Eiland CID and the City’s Biodiversity Management Branch. Clean-up operations, bird counts and Red List species monitoring protect a sensitive habitat.
Muizenberg East cluster
Private funds from local residential estates support City conservation efforts here. Ecological restoration, bird counts and Red List species mapping maintain a critical corridor through the urban fabric to False Bay Nature Reserve.
Malmesbury and Haasendal
Working with local conservation authorities to unlock long-term stable funding for conservation options that emerge during Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Authorisation processes.
Welgemoed City Improvement District
Swartland Shale Renosterveld brought into the portfolio this year. Restoration piloted across parks, verges and islands, with 4 000 plants supplied to establish local endemic verges.
Three species these sites exist to protect. Each lives almost nowhere else, and each is down to a handful of fragmented populations inside a growing city.
What lives here
Three species these sites exist to protect. Each lives almost nowhere else, and each is down to a handful of fragmented populations inside a growing city.
Critically endangered
Micro Frog
The smallest frog in Southern Africa, found in only four fragmented locations. Kenilworth Racecourse holds the only known population in Cape Town.
Critically endangered
Cape Flats Sand Fynbos
One of the most threatened vegetation types on Earth, reduced to remnants inside the built city. Monitored and restored at Milnerton Racecourse.
Critically endangered
Cape Flats Silkypuff
Propagated by hand in the nursery at Kenilworth, where volunteers collect seed and grow plants on for restoration back into the reserve.
Species projects
Two projects run on partnership rather than on land we manage. Each protects a species through infrastructure, monitoring and a working alliance of organisations.
Active · Endangered
Western Leopard Toad Underpass
Each breeding season the toads cross Peninsula Road at Zeekoevlei, and each season the road takes a share of them. Underpass tunnels give them a way beneath it. We drive the research and the monitoring at the tunnels, working through the Western Leopard Toad Conservation Committee that SANBI has led since 2008, with volunteers walking the road at night to count what crosses.
Made possible through partnerships and funding from Leisure Charitable Trust, Foundation Ensemble and the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund.
Active · Critically endangered
Burghers Walk African Penguin Conservation
Birds settling out of the Boulders Beach colony needed managing where they landed, in a residential part of Simon’s Town. A partnership between SANCCOB, Nature Connect, SANParks and the City of Cape Town was established to do it, covering monitoring, nest protection and the day-to-day work of a seabird colony living alongside people.
Delivered in partnership with SANCCOB, SANParks and the City of Cape Town.
This year in numbers
Financial year ended 28 February 2026.
Land on your doorstep worth protecting?
Residents associations, City Improvement Districts, landowners and developers all co-fund the sites on this page. We can show you how the agreements work.
