Our work
Protecting the geology
Two billion years old, and it fits in a pocket.
The Vredefort Dome is the largest verified meteorite-impact structure on Earth, and the rock itself is the reason it carries World Heritage status. The shatter cones, the shocked quartz, the overturned strata — these are the physical record of the event. There is no second copy of it anywhere.
That record is being taken apart. Illegal mining bites into it at scale. Vandalism takes chunks out of exposed faces. And piece by piece, visitors carry samples home because nobody told them the rock under their boots is the monument they came to see.
The trust's job here is threefold: watch the sites that are being worked, report what we find to the people with the authority to stop it, and get in front of visitors before the damage is done — because most of the small losses are not malice, they are simply not knowing.
This front needs backing.
Every one of these eight runs on donations, volunteers and landowners who say yes. If this is the part of the dome you care about, back it.