Our Ambitious Vision
Gora Wilderness Foundation serves as a not-for-profit management authority that coordinates conservation across the Gora Wilderness Conservation Area according to a conservation model that connects protected areas with surrounding private and community land to integrate biodiversity preservation with community development, economic development and food security. Gora Wilderness Foundation provides the conservation vision, governance framework, scientific management and long-term institutional continuity, while partnering landowners retain ownership of the land while committing to conservation-aligned land-use practices, biodiversity objectives and ecological restoration targets.
Once, wildlife moved freely across this landscape from the coastline of the Indian Ocean to the plains of the Little Karoo.
We believe they can again.
reconnecting the wilderness
Reconnecting the Wilderness
The Forgotten Wilderness
Along the southernmost extremities of the African continent lies a land where the ancient rhythm of Africa has been disturbed, changed, distorted and almost forgotten!
Endless herds of springbok, black wildebeest and half-striped quagga have been replaced with far-ranging mutton farms. Lagoons and estuaries where the hippopotamus openly bathed in the morning sun became eerily silent. Rolling coastal hills where herds of bontebok and blue antelope once ranged have been reduced to Renosterveld grasslands patches between wheat and canola. After more than 350 years after European settlement much about the former wilderness has been forgotten. Before this entered the San/Bushmen hunter-gatherers in time immemorial, and in their footsteps followed the Khoekhoe pastoralists arriving around 390 BC with their large herds of sheep, goats and cattle. By 1488 European forays commenced as Portuguese seafarers set foot on Cape soil! Dutch settlement in the year 1652 was merely the last driver in an ever-changing Cape!
In 1964 a call to conserve the last stretches of wilderness commenced and slowly protected areas started to be proclaimed as dotted islands of conservation, often still devoid of the wildlife that once called this forgotten wilderness home. Gora Wilderness Foundation exists to help write the next chapter in this wilderness. Through landscape-scale conservation, ecological restoration and collaboration with the people who live and work upon this land, we are working to reconnect the isolated islands of conservation — creating space for wildlife, people and nature to thrive together.