26/08/2026
PROTECTING THE LEOPARDS OF OUR LANDSCAPE 🐆Landmark Leopard & Predator Project - South Africa
The Karoo Donkey Sanctuary and the future Meiringspoort Private Nature Reserve - whose formal declaration through CapeNature’s Biodiversity Stewardship Programme is currently underway - are deeply honoured to announce that we will be working alongside and supporting Landmark Rewilding to study and protect the threatened free-roaming leopards of our region.
Classified as Vulnerable and facing continuing pressure from habitat loss, fragmentation and human-caused mortality, leopards are South Africa’s last free-roaming apex carnivores - and their future in the Cape’s mountain landscapes is far from secure.
The Landmark field team will be based with us while conducting the next phase of its important leopard and biodiversity survey across the Kammanassie landscape.
The survival of these extraordinary animals depends not only upon formally protected areas, but also upon the farms, private reserves and natural corridors connecting them.
The Kammanassie Mountain Range forms an exceptionally important ecological corridor linking leopard populations across the Baviaanskloof, Swartberg and Outeniqua mountain ranges. Protecting this connectivity is essential for leopard movement, dispersal and genetic diversity - and for the long-term survival of the species within our region.
Landmark Rewilding has already deployed 16 camera-trap stations across the Kammanassie Nature Reserve and surrounding private properties. Each station uses two cameras to photograph both sides of a passing leopard, allowing individual animals to be identified by their unique coat patterns.
The six-month survey will help researchers:
• Estimate the current leopard population density
• Understand leopard distribution and movement
• Assess prey abundance and wider wildlife diversity
• Identify the effects of human activity
• Strengthen ecological corridors
• Develop practical measures to reduce conflict between leopards and livestock farmers
• Inform future conservation policy and management
Landmark’s work extends far beyond research. Since the organisation was established in 2004, it has rescued 78 leopardsfrom human-wildlife conflict situations and fitted 57 leopards with tracking collars.
Its conflict-mitigation programme works constructively with farmers, using satellite tracking, non-lethal livestock-protection measures and, in appropriate circumstances, compensation agreements to protect both leopards and rural livelihoods.
This is precisely the kind of science-led, humane and collaborative conservation work that we believe our wildlife so desperately needs.
We are therefore especially proud to share Landmark Foundation’s latest press release concerning its six-year pursuit of justice for a protected leopard that was unlawfully trapped and left to die of dehydration.
The accused was convicted on all six charges in May 2026 - but after six years and 20 court appearances, sentencing has once again been postponed, this time until 7 October.
The case raises deeply troubling questions about delays in environmental justice, the failure to use South Africa’s principal biodiversity legislation and whether crimes against threatened and protected wildlife are being prosecuted with the seriousness they demand.
As custodians of the landscape currently progressing towards formal declaration as Meiringspoort Private Nature Reserve, we understand that protecting this land also means protecting the wildlife moving through it.
Our responsibility does not end at our fences.
By supporting Landmark Rewilding’s fieldwork, sharing knowledge and helping create a safer landscape for these extraordinary animals, we hope to ensure that the leopards of our region receive the strongest possible protection.
We are enormously excited to welcome the Landmark team and profoundly grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this important work.
The mountains belong to them too. 🐆⛰️🌿
