After 2 years of to-and-fro’ing, things are finally starting to happen! As you may, or may not be aware, Kenilworth Racing are undertaking a big upgrade, which will ultimately involve the refacing of the stables on the Koeberg Road side, as well as the upgrade of their track into a world class training facility. For years they have wanted to create a full oval outer track, but required access to a small piece of land owned by the CoCT, as part of their reserve. After a hefty Environmental Impact Assessment, and negotiations with Council, it was agreed to undertake a “landswap”, whereby the City would offer up the 0,56 hectares needed by Kenilworth Racing to complete the oval, in exchange for a 2,6 hectar piece of what was the old lunging ring area adjacent La Camargue, which would then be rehabilitated into the reserve.
Well, after method statements, and over a year of harvesting bulbs, seeds and plants from the old site, the process started a few weeks ago. In essence, this involved lifting up a full meter of topsoil from the site given up by the nature reserve, then lifting up all the old laterite from the old lunging ring area that was about to be given to the nature reserve, and doing a full “soil swap”. Further to this, also the removal of all the old timber and infrastructure. All this was done under the watchful eyes of our conservation representatives, and our Reserve Manager, Kyran Wright.
The soil swap was to ensure that all the species that would be relocated to the new area ( including some red flagged species of endangered sandveld vynbos), had the best possible chance of taking and regenerating new growth. After 2 weeks of moving soil around, the bulbs and seeds were finally planted, just before the start of all our rains. We look forward to following the progress of this rehabilitation site.
