On Monday, St Francis Today carried the FOSTER story, which included outdated information from the FOSTER website. This indicated that the operational costs were around R100,000 per Annum. In fact, FOSTER’s total expenditure for 2025 was some R520 000, of which some R430 000 was spent on reserve management, which rightfully dominates all other spending. The total includes year-end 13th cheques and amounts paid for hiring machines, buying gravel, accounting and bank fees, website hosting, etc.
33 Ha Of Natural Habitat
FOSTER manages the Irma Booysen Flora Reserve, the Seal Bay Nature Reserve, the Seal Point Nature Reserve (both Municipal and Provincial). It also manages Cape St. Francis Nature Reserve, comprising approximately 330 ha of natural habitat. FOSTER’s core management tasks are removing alien regrowth, removing Indigenous problem plants (mainly bitou) in key biodiversity areas, maintaining the path network (including litter removal), and maintaining reserve signage. It includes maintaining the firebreak system and keeping the tracks through the Irma Booysen Flora Reserve and in the Cape St. Francis Nature Reserve accessible for fire and other emergency services.
Breakdown
Herewith the breakdown of how the reserve management budget was spent in percentages:-
- Maintenance of pedestrian and cycle trails (39% of budget)
- Maintenance of fire access routes/firebreaks (0%)
- Control of problem plants: woody alien invasives (26%)
- Control of problem plants: extralimital Indigenous species (0%)
- Control of problem plants: bitou and other Indigenous species (28%)
- Restoration of degraded areas (6%)
- Erection of signage (0%)
Fund-Raising
FOSTER is not funded in any way by municipal, provincial or national government funding. It relies on memberships, donations, and fundraising events such as the Golf Day and the FOSTER JOL for all its funding. Rotary assists with funding for special projects such as restoring degraded areas by removing invasive Bitou. FOSTER also made very large donations. These were mainly from people who care to remain anonymous. Those contributions allowed us to contract local teams full-time and at fair wage rates. Whilst membership fees remain a key component of the funding, they now account for only about 15%.
Photo – courtesy of Liz Holmes
Read more: FOSTER Update February 2025
Recent Comments