Partners

For the past 143 years, the Cape of Good Hope SPCA has prevented cruelty to animals through education, law enforcement and veterinary care services – operating an Animal Hospital, Inspectorate and four Mobile Clinics serving impoverished communities. Their Adoption Centre, Farmyard, Horse Care Unit and Wildlife Unit provide safe havens for injured, stray and abandoned animals, and find loving homes for hundreds of animals every year. The 24-hour-a-day availability and refreshing professionalism of the Wildlife and Horse Care Units during the Muizenberg Fire highlighted a dire need of public funding. Our assistance will provide vital equipment needed for the rescue of wild animals and horses. If we care for our animals, we must care for those who provide them care.

The first Fire Protection Association formed in the Western Cape province, the Cape Peninsula Fire Protection Association (CPFPA) plays the lead role in promoting and implementing integrated wildfire management across the Cape Metropole, including TMNP. Integrating key resources, the CPFPA enables landowners, wildfire firefighting organisations and authorities at a national, provincial and local level to preempt, prevent, fight, control, mitigate and rehabilitate the ravages of increasingly large short-interval wildfires that pose a grave threat to our Fynbos Biome. A low-profile, self-reliant, statutory Public Benefit Organisation, the CPFPA needs our help to carry out much-needed research into more effective ways of combatting and managing wildfire.

SANParks Honorary Rangers (SHR) is a national volunteer organisation and key SANParks strategic partner. SHR – Table Mountain Region (TMR) comprises a dedicated, qualified membership that does far more than behind-the-scenes work immediately benefiting our ecology and TMNP visitors – by, for example, raising funds for boardwalks and providing TMNP logistical and other support. It has, for many years, dedicated itself to physically restoring our endangered Fynbos Biome through innovative long-term programmes of action. Funds raised from sales of this book will, without administrative cost, be used to expand the TMNP Safety Dog Unit and enhance visitor safety, as well as continue post-fire infrastructural and environmental rehabilitation.

Volunteer Wildfire Services (VWS) provides highly motivated, trained and skilled operational, logistical and planning wildfire firefighting personnel to its partners – including SANParks TMNP. VWS’s primary objectives are to manage, contain or suppress wildfire where and when necessary, preserve our fragile biodiversity and protect our water catchment areas. Public awareness of this key component of our integrated wildfire firefighting strategy reached unprecedented highs during the 2014/2015 wildfire season, and it received substantial support – enabling it to cover its operating costs through the coming year. However, if VWS is to maintain the safety of its members on the fire lines, develop much-needed infrastructure and grow to its full potential as an essential, self-sustaining public resource, it remains in critical need of continued financial support.