Discover gora
Through The Ages
a wild history
Tales of the
forgotten
Cape
Before the advent of written history on these southernmost shores of Africa, what is now the Gora Wilderness Reserve was already inhabited by an ancient people that we know today as the San Bushmen for time immemorial. Fine tuned to the ancient rhythm of the African wilderness, by day they followed the ebb-and-flow of the migrating herds of antelope and half-striped zebra across the veld. While, by night they celebrated tis land of abundance with song and dance around the roaring flames of a nocturnal campfire to the tune and rhythm of the Gora!
151,000 BC
The first human footprints appear in the archaeological record along the Cape shores of the Indian Ocean, seemingly imortalised by the ancestors of who was to become known as the San Bushmen. Their hunter-gathering culture was to survive unhindered by the ‘outside world’ for thousands of years, persisting until the dawn of the European colonial era.
Leading a semi-nomadic lifestyle with strong family bonds and a sense of communal custodianship rather than overt ownership, the San Bushmen lived in harmony with nature for the most part and their impacts on the natural world seemed negligible. Their stories remain to this day in annals of red ochre as paintings on rock faces all across the Gora Wilderness, often portraying daily scenes of dancing, hunting and the wildlife splendour that surrounded them, including eland, red hartebeest giraffe, rhinoceros, elephant, lion and even Nile crocodile.
10,000 BC
The end of the Pleistocene Epoch saw many changes to the ancient Gora Wilderness with shifting coastlines and drying lakes in a dramatic turmoil of events. In the south the Indian Ocean claimed over 90 km (56 miles) of coastal plain, effectively halting the migration of grazers around the coastal mountain ranges between the Cape lowlands and the interior. This in turn lead to the genetic isolation of some populations, and the distinct formation of the bontebok in the south and the blesbok in the north. North of the Outeniqua Mountains, the many lakes and great rivers of the Little Karoo began to desiccate along with their verdant vegetation. This created the circumstances that led to the ultimate extinction of long-horned buffalo, giant hartebeest, and the large Cape zebra.
390 BC
The first wave of disruptions for the San hunter-gatherer culture came not in a fleet of ships across the ocean and a sounding trumpet, but rather by a subtle bleat as fat-tailed sheep and their Khoikhoi herders arrived in the Cape. The arrival of the Khoikhoi herders, a people group related to the San, had a rippling effect as pastoralist culture introduced new concepts of animal husbandry, ownership, societal hierarchy, hereditary chieftainship and landuse practices among the original hunter-gathering society. Over time the traditional San culture was displaced along the coastal forelands and over those stretches of land where pasturage was plentiful for livestock, while the true San persisted in the arid and mountainous areas that were less favoured by the Khoikhoi herders.
420 ad
Cattle arrived in the Cape and were added to the sheep and goat herds that the Khoikhoi already kept in large numbers. The proliferation of livestock in the Cape started to have some local effects on certain grazing herbivores due to competition, and populations of species like oribi, blue antelope, roan antelope and common reedbuck started dwindling. While purposeful burning for new growth and for the active eradication of predators seemed to have an effect on vegetation structure and species composition. With efforts sometimes resorting to thicket and bush clearing in order to eliminate predators.
1488
The Portuguese seafarer, Bartolomeus Diaz becomes the first European to set foot on the southern shores of the Gora Wilderness and calls the area now known as Mossel Bay “Angra dos Vaqueiros” or the ‘Bay of Herders’ after the Khoikhoi people and their great herds of livestock.
1652
The Dutch East India Company establishes a refreshment station at the foot of Table Mountain, under the command of Jan Van Riebeeck. Exploratory forays quickly ensue into what is now the Gora Wilderness, 200km to the east of Cape Town, opening the path for livestock bartering and ivory hunting in the wild hinterland. By 1668 Dutch explorers push beyond the eastern reaches of the Gora Wilderness in what they called ‘Outeniqualand”.
1713
The first grazing rights were granted by the Dutch East India Company to European settlers along the southern stretches of the Gora Wilderness and the establishment of farms quickly ensues, along with the active persecution of native predators and large-scale ivory hunting.
1799
The blue antelope Hippotragus leucophaeus became extinct at the hand of a farmer, blissfully unaware the he had killed the last recorded individual of the species.
1878
The quagga, an iconic half-striped zebra of the Karoo, became extinct in the wild, while the last known individual died in the Rotterdam Zoo in 1883. By this time the only large wildlife that remained in the Gora Wilderness was a few elusive leopard and a handful of Cape mountain zebra that had retreated to the most inaccessible reaches of the Gamkaberg Mountain, the rest had all become locally extinct this far south.
1931
The Bontebok National Park is established to conserve the last remaining bontebok Damaliscus pygargus pygargus, numbering a mere 17 individuals at the time.
1974
The Gamkaberg Nature Reserve is proclaimed to conserve the last 7 Cape mountain zebra Equus zebra zebra in the area now known as the Gora Wilderness.
2003-2004
The first herd of elephants and the first pride of lions are successfully reintroduced into a fenced reserve in the Little Karoo, through the conservation efforts of the Sanbona Wildlife Reserve. To this day the Sanbona lions and elephants remain one of only two self-sustaining and free-roaming (within a large fenced reserve) populations in the entire Western Cape.
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south.
a wild history
Tales of the
forgotten
Cape
Before the advent of written history on these southernmost shores of Africa, what is now the Gora Wilderness Reserve was already inhabited by an ancient people that we know today as the San Bushmen for time immemorial. Fine tuned to the ancient rhythm of the African wilderness, by day they followed the ebb-and-flow of the migrating herds of antelope and half-striped zebra across the veld. While, by night they celebrated this land of abundance with song and dance around the roaring flames of a nocturnal campfire to the tune and rhythm of the Gora!
151,000 BC
The first human footprints appear in the archaeological record along the Cape shores of the Indian Ocean, seemingly imortalised by the ancestors of who was to become known as the San Bushmen. Their hunter-gathering culture was to survive unhindered by the ‘outside world’ for thousands of years, persisting until the dawn of the European colonial era.
Leading a semi-nomadic lifestyle with strong family bonds and a sense of communal custodianship rather than overt ownership, the San Bushmen lived in harmony with nature for the most part and their impacts on the natural world seemed negligible. Their stories remain to this day in annals of red ochre as paintings on rock faces all across the Gora Wilderness, often portraying daily scenes of dancing, hunting and the wildlife splendour that surrounded them, including eland, red hartebeest, giraffe, rhinoceros, elephant, lion and even Nile crocodile.
10,000 bc
The end of the Pleistocene Epoch saw many changes to the ancient Gora Wilderness with shifting coastlines and drying lakes in a dramatic turmoil of events. In the south the Indian Ocean claimed over 90 km (56 miles) of coastal plain, effectively halting the migration of grazers around the coastal mountain ranges between the Cape lowlands and the interior. This in turn lead to the genetic isolation of some populations, and the distinct formation of the bontebok in the south and the blesbok in the north. North of the Outeniqua Mountains, the many lakes and great rivers of the Little Karoo began to desiccate along with their verdant vegetation. This created the circumstances that led to the ultimate extinction of long-horned buffalo, giant hartebeest, and the large Cape zebra.
390 bc
The first wave of disruptions for the San hunter-gatherer culture came not in a fleet of ships across the ocean and a sounding trumpet, but rather by a subtle bleat as fat-tailed sheep and their Khoekhoe herders arrived in the Cape. The arrival of the Khoekhoe herders, a people group related to the San, had a rippling effect as pastoralist culture introduced new concepts of animal husbandry, ownership, societal hierarchy, hereditary chieftainship and landuse practices among the original hunter-gathering society. Over time the traditional San culture was displaced along the coastal forelands and over those stretches of land where pasturage was plentiful for livestock, while the true San persisted in the arid and mountainous areas that were less favoured by the Khoekhoe herders. The use of fire became an increasingly applied tool across the Cape wilderness to remove tall grass that did not favour sheep and promote new growth of short green swathes. This practice inadvertently altered floral communities in areas where it favoured the increase of bush and led to the conversion of large tracts of grassland to unpalatable shrubland.
420 ad
Cattle arrived in the Cape and were added to the sheep and goat herds that the Khoekhoe already kept in large numbers. The proliferation of livestock in the Cape started to have some local effects on certain grazing herbivores due to competition, and populations of species like oribi, blue antelope, roan antelope and common reedbuck started dwindling. While purposeful burning for new growth and for the active eradication of predators seemed to have an effect on vegetation structure and species composition. With efforts sometimes resorting to thicket and bush clearing in order to eliminate predators.
1488
The Portuguese seafarer, Bartolomeus Diaz becomes the first European to set foot on the southern shores of the Gora Wilderness and calls the area now known as Mossel Bay “Angra dos Vaqueiros” or the ‘Bay of Herders’ after the Khoekhoe people and their great herds of livestock.
1652
The Dutch East India Company establishes a refreshment station at the foot of Table Mountain, under the command of Jan Van Riebeeck. Exploratory forays quickly ensue into what is now the Gora Wilderness, 200km to the east of Cape Town, opening the path for livestock bartering and ivory hunting in the wild hinterland. By 1668 Dutch explorers push beyond the eastern reaches of the Gora Wilderness in what they called ‘Outeniqualand‘.
1713
The first grazing rights were granted by the Dutch East India Company to European settlers along the southern stretches of the Gora Wilderness and the establishment of farms quickly ensues, along with the active persecution of native predators and large-scale ivory hunting.
1799
The blue antelope Hippotragus leucophaeus became extinct at the hand of a farmer, blissfully unaware the he had killed the last recorded individual of the species.
1878
The quagga, an iconic half-striped zebra of the Karoo, became extinct in the wild, while the last known individual died in the Rotterdam Zoo in 1883. By this time the only large wildlife that remained in the Gora Wilderness was a few elusive leopard and a handful of Cape mountain zebra that had retreated to the most inaccessible reaches of the Gamkaberg Mountain, the rest had all become locally extinct this far south.
1931
The Bontebok National Park is established to conserve the last remaining bontebok Damaliscus pygargus pygargus, numbering a mere 17 individuals at the time.
1974
The Gamkaberg Nature Reserve is proclaimed to conserve the last 7 Cape mountain zebra Equus zebra zebra in the area now known as the Gora Wilderness.
2003-2004
The first herd of elephants and the first pride of lions are successfully reintroduced into a fenced reserve in the Little Karoo, through the conservation efforts of the Sanbona Wildlife Reserve. To this day the Sanbona lions and elephants remain one of only two self-sustaining and free-roaming (within a large fenced reserve) populations in the entire Western Cape.
2022
In the vast landscape of the Garden Route and Little Karoo, dotted with many small fenced-in reserves with isolated populations of reintroduced native wildlife, the Gora Wilderness Reserve and Gora Wilderness Foundation is born with the singular, long-term vision of connecting the many individual conservation areas across a defined 1,100,000 hectare landscape into a single ecological entity where natural processes can follow the ebb-and-flow of the original rhythm of Africa.
2023
Three core areas are defined from which to start weaving the the new connected wilderness, each strategically located within the greater landscape to ensure the greatest connectivity, and two of these are officially established. The first being the 3,146 hectare Outeniqua Cluster in the corridor between Gondwana Game Reserve and Botlierskop Game Reserve where the Knoetze, Du Toit, Repas and Bronge families formed the core. The second being the 10,000 hectare Gamka Cluster between Gondwana Game Reserve and the Gamkaberg Nature Reserve, where the Van Den Heever family pledged to form the core in the Attaquaskloof.