Wildlife Conservation Trust Vredefort Dome

The place

Older than memory.
Still teeming with life.

The Vredefort Dome is the largest verified meteorite-impact structure on Earth — a vast, ancient scar of weathered hills cradling the Vaal River near Parys in the Free State. It is the only such structure recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Inside its 300-kilometre rim live the animals we protect: kudu, zebra, leopard, eland, hundreds of bird species — and a quiet, stubborn ecosystem that has outlived everything thrown at it. Our work is to keep it that way.

A note on records, because they matter to us: at roughly 2.02 billion years old, Vredefort is the second-oldest impact structure ever confirmed. Only Yarrabubba in Western Australia — dated in 2020 to about 2.23 billion years — is older. Yarrabubba has almost no surface expression left. Vredefort you can walk across, which is precisely what makes it worth protecting.

Largest

Impact structure on Earth

2.02bn

Years old

2005

UNESCO listed

Our work

Eight fronts, one promise.

Conservation here isn't one job. It's eight, running at the same time, every day, year after year — across land we don't own and can't fence.

01

Biodiversity & research

Counting what lives here and tracking how it changes — species surveys, camera traps and long-run records that turn the dome from anecdote into evidence.

Protecting the geology

The rock is the reason this place is a World Heritage Site. Illegal mining, vandalism and people breaking pieces off to carry away are stripping a 2-billion-year record we cannot replace.

The river

Raw sewage is being pumped into the Vaal. We sample water, log the results, and push them to the people who can act — because everything downstream of the dome drinks this river.

Invasive plants

Unglamorous, relentless, and one of the biggest threats we have. Alien species drink the water table dry and crowd out the grassland. It is cut-by-cut, season after season, forever.

Fire

Two jobs in one: teaching landowners and visitors how fires start here, and turning out to fight the ones that do. In a dry Free State winter this is the difference between a season and a decade.

History & graves

The dome is thick with human history — battlefields and the graves of people who died in them. Many are unmarked, unprotected and slowly disappearing. They deserve better than that.

Working with landowners

Nearly all of the dome is private farmland. Conservation here only happens by agreement — balancing a landowner's rights over their property with the conservation rights of what lives on it. It is slow, human work.

Education & awareness

Bringing schools onto the land and landowners into the science — clean water, fire, alien clearing — because the next generation of conservationists is sitting in a Free State classroom right now.

A World Heritage Site
that stands on its own.

The Vredefort Dome carries UNESCO World Heritage status. What it does not carry is any working recognition from our own government — and with no official recognition comes no official support. No budget, no rangers, no enforcement.

So the work falls to a trust, a handful of landowners, and the people who choose to fund it. That is unusual for a site of this significance anywhere in the world. It is also, right now, the only thing standing between the dome and the people quarrying it, burning it and pumping sewage into its river.

Every rand here is a rand no department sent.

Stand with the dome

The Vaal

The river runs through all of it.

The Vaal curls through the middle of the dome. It waters the farms, fills the wetlands, and carries whatever anyone upstream puts into it — including raw sewage pumped in from failing treatment works.

So we sample it. Regularly, at fixed points, with the results logged and handed to the people with the authority to act. Water quality is not an opinion — it is a number, and numbers are harder to ignore.

We also work the other bank: teaching landowners what actually protects a river, from where cattle drink to how a septic system fails.

Who we do this with

The Blue Deal Dutch-backed water programme — landowner education on clean water and catchment care.
Department of Water & Sanitation Water sampling and reporting.
Dept. of Environmental Services, North West Provincial environmental oversight.
North-West University, Potchefstroom Aquatic ecosystem studies with Prof. Wynand Malherbe.

The stretches that need us most are the ones we can't reach on foot. A boat would open them up. Help us get one →

The river

Andy in the field

Field diary · No. 04

Two pieces of wire.

The cheapest tool there is. The slowest way to die.

A snare is two strands of fencing wire, a slip-knot and an anchor. It is set on a game path at the height of an animal's neck, and it catches whatever walks into it — duiker, kudu, warthog, a leopard, somebody's dog. It does not choose, and it is not quick.

So we walk. Fence-lines, drainage corridors, the paths the animals actually use — finding the wire, lifting it out, and calling the specialists when something is still alive in it. We don't rehabilitate animals ourselves. Finding it, freeing it, and knowing who to call: that is the work.

Field notes — Vredefort Dome patrol

04 Read the field journal

Impact, in plain numbers

What your support has built.

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Species recorded

Species logged across the dome through our surveys and camera traps since 2018 — the baseline everything else is measured against.

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Under protection

Hectares of dome wilderness under active patrol, fence repair, and snare sweeps.

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Snares removed

Wire snares pulled off fence-lines and game paths since 2019. Each one is a life kept.

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Schools on the land

Free State school groups hosted at the dome for guided field days. Conservation starts in classrooms.

From the field

Latest news & field notes.

View all stories →

Field journal 29 Jul 2026

The Vredefort Dome: Conserving the World's Greatest Geological Legacy

Beneath our feet lies the story of one of Earth's most extraordinary events. The Vredefort Dome is more than an ancient landscape—it is the oldest and largest visible meteorite impact structure on our planet. Conserving this geological treasure ensures that future generations can continue to learn from, appreciate, and be inspired by one of nature's greatest masterpieces.

Field journal 09 Jun 2026

The Koedoeslaagte road is clean again

The stretch between Martini Ranch and White Bridge has been cleared of dumped rubbish — again. It is the least glamorous work the trust does, and some of the most necessary.

Field journal 07 May 2026

Burning to keep it alive

Highveld grassland evolved with fire and needs it. Managing the burn — cool, early, patchy — is one of the least understood and most consequential things we do.

Day-to-day dispatches go up on our Facebook page →

Gallery

The dome, up close.

Open the full gallery →

Sunrise on the rim

The Vaal

Granite of the dome

Grassland, late season

Field day

The crater rim

Conservation, in motion

From the field — a short film.

This three-minute film by Wildlife ACT and WWF is not our footage — it's about black rhino tracking on another patch of southern Africa. We share it because the posture is the same one we take on the dome: real animals, real fieldwork, no hype.

Black Rhino Conservation with WWF WWF · Wildlife ACT

More short films →

Get involved

Conservation is a group effort.

Pick the way you want to help. Every one of these makes a real, traceable difference in the dome.

Contact

Come and walk the dome.

We answer every message. Drop us a line about volunteering, donations, school visits, or research access — we'll be back in 24 hours.

Where we are

Parys, Free State
Vredefort Dome World Heritage Site

Email

[email protected]

Phone

076 894 1886

Protecting the wild

Older than memory.
Still teeming with life.