A group of about thirty people met at the Nature Conservation Office in Jonkershoek to discuss implementation of the River Health Programme in the Western Cape. The group was representative of local, provincial and national government, environmental groups, consultants and academic organisations. An information session by the National Team on each of the RHP portfolios was followed by a presentation of past initiatives in the Western Cape and a discussion of the way forward. The presentation of past initiatives in the province consisted of an overview of the Cape Metropolitan Council’s monitoring of rivers by Candice Haskins and an a summary of the past SASS monitoring of Western Cape rivers by Helen Dallas.
Some of the issues raised were:
How to deal with developing methods and the retention of information while methods were still being developed (e.g. the habitat assessment that forms part of the SASS4 assessment).
The links between the State of Rivers reports and the Cape Action Plan for the Environment and existing environmental reporting need to be established.
How the proficiency testing of river health samplers was to be implemented in the Province.
The adaptation of the Riparian Vegetation Index for Western Cape rivers.
The training needs of the province: training of samplers are of the highest priority - sampling guidelines need to be developed and made available on the website, training of the data interpreter is of a lesser importance, workshops/river days should be organised to demonstrate methods and mentoring systems need to be put in place.
The need to support training of river health at schools, especially by providing for the training of teachers. Existing initiatives for schools education programmes should be utilised.
It was proposed that the way forward for the RHP in the province would be as follows:
A core team would be formed to drive the process
A catchment-by-catchment approach would be followed
A workshop would be held to prioritise catchments for implementation
A monitoring plan would be developed to address current information shortcomings (sites and frequencies)
Capacity building initiatives would be built into the implementation process
The reporting template would be supported
