Sugarbird Project

18/08/2026

Ever wondered why we are called the Sugarbird Project?

The Cape Sugarbird is a remarkable bird endemic to South Africa’s Cape Floral Kingdom. “Endemic” means a species that occurs naturally in one specific geographic region and nowhere else in the world. Like Fynbos itself, this makes the Cape Sugarbird a powerful symbol of what we are working to protect.

Cape Sugarbirds feed largely on the nectar of proteas and, in doing so, play an important role as pollinators of the Cape flora. Their survival depends on the health of the vegetation that provides them with food, shelter and breeding habitat.

And that is exactly why we chose the Sugarbird as our symbol.

When we remove invasive alien plants, we are not simply removing trees and shrubs that don’t belong here. We are restoring habitat. We are protecting the fynbos plants that have evolved here over millions of years. We are giving indigenous vegetation the space and resources to recover. And by restoring the vegetation, we are also restoring the intricate web of life that depends on it — from insects and reptiles to birds, mammals and countless other species.

So, the Sugarbird represents something much bigger than one beautiful bird. It represents the whole ecosystem. When we protect the fynbos, we protect the Sugarbird. When we protect the Sugarbird, we are protecting the fynbos.

That is why we are the Sugarbird Project.

The Cape Floral Kingdom is one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth, with an extraordinary number of species found nowhere else. Our main aim is to protect and restore this unique ecosystem — one invasive plant at a time.

15/08/2026

Lovely multi-generational turn out today to help us in clearing Port Jackson. This really is a fun thing for everyone to do! Working among the geraniums also smells amazing :)

13/08/2026

VOLUNTEER THIS SATURDAY

We need you! If you've been on the group for a while and haven't joined us yet... then Saturday is your day! We'll be in the Silvermine Valley removing Port Jackson. It’s going to be a beautiful day out on the mountain.

📍 Where: Sunbird Centre - Silvermine Valley off Ou Kaapse Weg
📍 When: Saturday 15 August - meet at 08:30 and work for however long you want - even an hour makes a huge difference!

From the Sunbird Centre we will walk up the valley to where we will work. We’re easy to find so if you arrive later come and find us.

🎒 What to bring:
👉 Your grubber, loppers, small fork, or spade. Gardening gloves are also very useful. We'll provide for those that don’t have.
👉 A hat
👉 Plenty of water and maybe a snack
👉 Your friends, family, kids — all ages welcome! The more hands, the more fun!

Come help us save the fynbos, meet like-minded people, and have a lot of fun!

12/08/2026

We don’t just clear alien vegetation; we also save trees. In this case, we’re protecting the indigenous Afromontane forest of Newlands in Cape Town.

Following Covid, we saw a dramatic increase in illegal bark stripping for medicinal purposes. Hundreds of indigenous trees were being stripped of their bark, effectively killing them. We needed to act quickly to protect these precious trees.

Willem Boshoff and Neil Williamson, founders of the Newlands Forest Conservation Group , researched the problem and came up with a remarkably simple solution. With permission from SANParks , the Sugarbird Project immediately stepped in to help.

The idea was to paint the trunks of targeted indigenous trees. The paint is harmless to the trees, but we hoped that visibly marked bark would no longer be considered valuable for medicinal use. It has proved enormously effective, and today we see only a handful of cases of bark stripping.

Between 2022 and 2023, we estimate that 30 000 vulnerable indigenous trees were painted. We also discovered that trees which had already been stripped could sometimes be saved if they were painted quickly enough.

The success of this approach suggests that bark painting could be used on a much larger scale wherever indigenous trees are threatened by illegal bark stripping. Prevention is key if we are to protect these irreplaceable forests.

We are immensely grateful for the continued support from the Friends of Table Mountain and the Stekhoven family and their company, Duram Paints, for generously donating the paint that made this important conservation work possible.

SANParks - Table Mountain National Park

05/08/2026

Proud to be part of this!

Some good news in eradicating invasive alien vegetation!

A new lease on life for Brodie’s Link

Many residents of the Hangklip villages will be familiar with the name ‘Brodie’s Link’. Some understand it to be the hiking trail that leads up to the summit of Hangklip mountain; the name has also been ascribed to a footpath linking Pringle Bay with Silversands in Betty’s Bay. However, it is none of these.
Brodie’s Link is a block of land consisting of five adjoining farm portions, with a combined area of 1068 hectares, that were purchased to create an extraordinarily valuable ecological corridor. It encompasses the Hangklip mountain massif in the west, the catchment through which the Hangklip Valley stream flows, and the Blesberg mountain and surrounds in the east, where it adjoins an area of Municipal Nature Reserve adjacent to Silversands.
Its origin dates to 1998 when the Brodie family purchased the first of the block’s five farms, ‘Koppie Alleen’. The alternative to this conservation-oriented gesture would almost certainly have been urban development. The other properties were acquired over an extended period, ending in 2010. Funding for much of this was provided by Simon Marais, someone who loved the Western Cape’s fynbos-clad mountains. Brodie’s Link is now held in trust by WWF, with CapeNature appointed as the management agency.
Almost unnoticed, since its establishment as a conservation area, Brodie’s Link has become heavily infested by invasive alien vegetation. The area’s natural biodiversity became crowded out by dense thicket of Australian acacias (mostly A. cyclops, rooikrans) and, amongst other impacts, its capacity to sustain the functioning of the Hangklip Valley stream and associated wetlands was reduced because of the greater water uptake by the invasive thicket compared to fynbos.
The wildfire of January 2024 created an opportunity to tackle the ecological restoration of Brodie’s Link. Most of the acacia thicket was killed by the fire, which was also hot enough to incinerate a proportion of the standing woody biomass. Anticipating the widespread germination of soil-stored acacia seed, the local hacking community put in a huge effort to hand-pull literally hundreds of thousands of rooikrans seedlings, creating space for long-absent fynbos species to regain a foothold in the cleared areas. However, it was soon realised that the rate of re-growth of the invasive species exceeded the capacity of the hackers to stay ahead of the process of re-invasion.
And then, something remarkable happened. The Sugarbird Project (https://sugarbird.org.za), a nonprofit organisation focused on the eradication of invasive alien vegetation from Western Cape fynbos ecosystems, offered to assist. A fully funded team of Sugarbird staff was deployed in July 2026 to systematically clear Brodie’s Link of invasive alien vegetation. This followed on from the team’s sterling work clearing the Buffels Dam catchment of Hakea, the Rooiels-Pringle Bay valley wetlands of Bottlebrush, and the coastal plan beneath Old Porter Drive, near Rooiels, of Spidergum, Pines and other problem species. Applying best-practice techniques, the trained team is well equipped and subject to expert supervision, including from within the Hangklip community. Not only does their work entail initial clearing operations, but annual follow-up operations are scheduled, for as long as it takes to restore the environment to a level of routine management. To extract some value from the cleared biomass, small-scale harvesting of firewood from some of the dead rooikrans trees is also carried out. This aims to improve access to the area to assist future clearing operations and to reduce fire risk through the removal of dry, superfluous fuel.
Hikers visiting the Hangklip Valley may encounter the team working high on the slopes of Hangklip. In months to come, they will move to other areas of Brodie’s Link. The staff will almost certainly welcome a friendly greeting and word of encouragement.
Coming to the rescue, in a time of dire need, was the Marais family once again. Without their financial support for the current initiative, through the Sugarbird Project, the ecological restoration of Brodie’s Link would not be possible. As a community, we are extremely grateful for this support.



Note: A detailed description of the history of Brodie’s Link is published in the December 2023 edition of the Pringle Post.

05/08/2026

Imagine if the only place lions existed was in Cape Town…

Or elephants.

Or penguins.

We’d probably move The Mountain to protect them.

Thousands of plant species exist only here in the Cape Floral Kingdom. They are every bit as unique and every bit as deserving of our protection.

Many people walk past them every day without even knowing they exist. Protecting fynbos isn’t about saving “scrubby looking bush’. It’s about ensuring that an entire global environmental heritage survives for future generations.

Fewer than 0.2% of the Earth’s land surface is home to the Cape Floral Kingdom. Yet this tiny corner of the world contains nearly 9,000 plant species, around 70% of which occur nowhere else on Earth.

If these species disappear here, they disappear forever.

We need all the help we can get - please share and help us to educate not just South Africans but the world in our fight to save the Cape’s endangered Fynbos.

03/08/2026

IMPROVING TREE PLANTING PRACTICES.
THE RIGHT TREE in
THE RIGHT PLACE for
THE RIGHT PURPOSE.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is one of the world’s leading authorities on conservation science.

If you’re interested in the science behind these issues, it’s well worth a read.

Type Resolution Other code 8.001 Conference type World Conservation Congress Year / Conference 2025 Abu Dhabi Improving tree planting practices – Planting the right tree in the right place for the right purpose Améliorer les pratiques de plantation forestière – Planter la bonne essence, au bon...

01/08/2026

ANSWERING SOME QUESTIONS

There have been questions and concerns about trees being removed by the Sugarbird Project in Tokai, so we’d like to explain how this work is managed.

The Sugarbird Project does not decide arbitrarily which trees are removed. Our teams work under the direction of SANParks and operate according to the Table Mountain National Park Management Plan. SANParks allocates us specific management units (NBALs) and provides a list of the alien plant species to be controlled within those areas. Our work is carried out under their oversight.

The map below illustrates this. The green area is the Tokai Arboretum, where trees are retained as part of its heritage and educational value. The orange areas show the NBALs allocated to the Sugarbird Project for alien plant clearing. The two red dots in 359 are the gums and the cluster of dots in 402 are the oak trees that we have been questioned about. They fall outside the arboretum, within areas being restored to Peninsula Granite Fynbos.

The goal in these restoration areas is to restore the natural fynbos ecosystem. This means controlling and removing alien plant species. While people are sometimes told that oaks and gums are “not invasive”, this is not correct. Oak and Eucalyptus species occurring in the park are invasive, and their control forms part of the approved management plan for these areas.

We understand that many people have a deep emotional attachment to some of these trees, and we genuinely respect those feelings. At the same time, there are many others who care deeply about restoring and protecting one of the world’s most unique and threatened ecosystems. SANParks has a legal responsibility to manage the park in accordance with its approved management plan, and we are proud to assist with that work.

Where possible, we also try to avoid the more controversial areas and focus our efforts where they are most needed and least contentious, while still fulfilling the work allocated to us.

We hope this provides some clarity about how these decisions are made. We are always happy to answer questions about the restoration work we do.