A lioness spotted during a guided safari tour at Dinokeng Game Reserve, outside Pretoria. (Photo: Michelle Spatali/AFP via Getty Images)
Twenty years ago, Dinokeng Game Reserve was a patch of savannah and grassland owned by livestock and crop farmers, about a 30-minute drive northeast of Gauteng, adjacent to Hammanskraal, a sprawling town of more than 120,000 people.
Today the reserve is a Big Five game reserve covering 21,000 hectares, larger than private game reserves such as Sabi Sabi (5,400 hectares) and Malamala (12,000 hectares), but less than half the size of Pilanesberg National Park (55,000 hectares) in the northwest and just 1% of the 2 million hectare Kruger National Park.
It is the result of a unique collaboration between around 180 private landowners (each owning around 21 hectares of land) and a government-backed management company, Blue IQ (now the Economic Development Authority), through the Dinokeng Project.
This public-private partnership took shape in the early 2000s and culminated in the designation of the Dinokeng Game Reserve in 2011.
Overall it has been a success and has contributed significantly to the state's biodiversity credits, a financial instrument designed to offset biodiversity loss caused by mining, construction and agriculture.
This will provide jobs not only to Gauteng's Big Five tourism industry, but also to many people in the Hammanskraal and Dinokeng areas (including the mining town of Cullinan) and the Roodeplaat Dam area, where employment opportunities will decline further as mining activities decline.
The reserve's 80 lodges employ between 800 and 1,000 staff, mostly from the region.
The zoo in particular has become a model of conservation where humans and wildlife can coexist closely, despite some controversy over allegations of mismanagement of two elephants and criticism over the euthanasia of a lion that went on a rampage and killed a woman in 2018.
The reserve is the world's only habitable Big Five game reserve located within a metropolitan area.
But working with private landowners and being in close proximity to a vast urban periphery brings unique challenges.
Most importantly, the reserve will be expanded to at least 40,000 hectares to become self-sustaining, and more farms will be de-fenced, allowing animals to roam more freely. Connected landscapes support healthy ecosystems and ensure genetic diversity and seasonal migration routes for animals.
“There are still landowner islands that are fenced off from the reserve, so work is still ongoing.
“A further 964 hectares of land owned by the Gauteng Department of Public Works are due to be added to Dinokeng and we are in discussions with the South African army to incorporate a further 12,000 hectares,” said the conservancy's chairman, Harthof Streicher.
Streicher said the conservation area is in the process of declaring the area under the Protected Areas Act, and that 90 percent of landowners are in favor of the move.
“Property prices will likely rise if the area is designated – they have already increased significantly over the past 13 years – and it offers a great lifestyle for environmentally conscious people, including foreign investors,” he said.
Poaching and trapping are more pressing issues in Dinokeng, with a large portion of the city's budget going to mitigating these threats.
Traps are used frequently, with 230 removed during March and around 1,000 found each year, and 112 animals killed in the past three years.
Educating people in the surrounding community about the importance of conservation is an ongoing priority for the refuge management team, Streicher says.
Thanks to the efforts of the 16-member Dinokeng Anti-Poaching Unit, and with the support of surveillance drones operated by the SPOT (Strategic Conservation of Endangered Species) team, both trapping and poaching have been reduced.
“In the five months leading up to May, four impalas were killed in snares, and there have been just three cases of rhino poaching in 13 years,” Streicher said.
A major deterrent to rhino poaching is the satellite-linked tracking devices implanted in each rhino's horn, which allow monitoring teams to know the rhino's location at all times and to pinpoint the location of the tracking device if a rhino's horn is poached.
The reserve has 24 elephants, most of which are collared, which comes at a significant cost: collaring one elephant costs about R35,000, excluding helicopter, tranquilizer gun and vet fees.
Again, the collars provide vital real-time data so rangers can shoo away animals if they get too close to populated areas or see what's going on if an animal isn't moving.
To offset some of this cost, the sanctuary is offering 10 seats on collaring tours to the public for R2,000.
Due to the small size of the reserve, monitoring and management interventions are necessary to maintain a healthy gene pool, balance predator-prey ratios and avoid over-exploitation of the land.
Contraception to control animal populations and capturing big cats to trade with other parks to avoid inbreeding take up a large portion of the refuge's operating budget.
For example, Dinokeng's Black Rhino Project recently relocated 14 black rhinos from KwaZulu-Natal to the reserve, while 60 buffaloes, four lions and 16 white rhinos were purchased from other reserves.
The cheetahs are fitted with GPS satellite collars, which cost about R50,000 each.
The first cheetahs were introduced in 2012 and there are now 21 at the reserve, contributing to metapopulations across Africa through the Endangered Wildlife Trust's Cheetah Metapopulation Project, which aims to prevent inbreeding and ensure the long-term survival of cheetahs in small fenced reserves.
The cheetah is the second most endangered carnivore in South Africa after the African wild dog.
Government-funded teams suppress fires, maintain the road network (Dinokeng has more than 140 kilometres of winding roads), and remove invasive species.
Fundraising is a never-ending and crucial mission for the sanctuary to survive, Streicher said.
“You can spend R10 million just to upgrade. [160km] “It's the perimeter fence,” he says.
Controversially, hunters sometimes pay the reserve between R10,000 and R130,000 to shoot certain animals that are past breeding age and considered expendable. These are mainly buffalo, of which there are around 1,500 on the reserve (one of the largest buffalo herds in the country).
Streicher said the animals selected would be killed anyway, so the sanctuary needs funding.
“We do about 20 hunts a year and sell by-products from these animals such as biltong and dolor, which are processed into braai packs.
“Remember, this is not a luxury reserve. Accommodation here costs a third less than in Kruger National Park, for example. So even though tourism revenues are growing at 10% a year, it's still not enough to fund the operation and management of the reserve.”
“No animal sanctuary is perfect. There are always challenges and difficult decisions to make, but looking at this project in its entirety, a dream that initially seemed so far away has become a reality.”
“And it continues to grow as one of South Africa's greatest biodiversity assets,” he says.
End trophy hunting
In its revised National Biodiversity Economy Strategy (2024), the government promotes trophy hunting, particularly of the Big Five animals, as a way of generating revenue for conservation.
However, this emphasis on human interests at the expense of wildlife conservation has sparked strong opposition from NGOs such as Good Governance Africa.
“Trophy hunting, particularly the hunting of attractive endangered species, should be abolished as a pillar of any national biodiversity strategy.”
“The purported economic benefits do not stand up to scrutiny and the environmental costs are too high,” says Ross Harvey, a natural resource economist, policy analyst and director of research and programs at Good Governance Africa.
“A more sustainable alternative would be to increase non-consummatory activities such as wildlife observation, birdwatching and photography, and better integrate local communities into the ecotourism value chain.”
But Harvey acknowledged that “small reserves face unique challenges and it is encouraging to see Dinokeng actively expanding, which in itself has the potential to create an alternative to trophy hunting through luxury tourism.”
See Good Governance Africa’s policy brief on this issue here.
