Our work
Working with landowners
We do not own this land. We cannot fence it. We work with the people who do.
Nearly all of the Vredefort Dome is private farmland. There is no park gate, no reserve boundary, no ranger post that covers it. Everything the trust achieves here happens because a landowner agreed to it — which makes conservation on the dome a matter of relationships before it is a matter of anything else.
That means holding two things at once: a landowner's rights over their own property, and the conservation rights of the wildlife, water and heritage that live on it. Those two do not always point the same direction, and pretending otherwise is how trust gets broken.
So it is slow, human work. Coffee at a farmhouse table. Turning up when you said you would. Being useful on a fire, a snare sweep, a problem animal, long before you ask for anything. Agreements built that way hold — and they cover far more ground than any fence could.
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.