Samara Karoo Private Game Reserve

[Lisbeth]

Peter!

[Lisbeth]

RESTORING THE GREAT KAROO ONE REINTRODUCTION AT A TIME


by
Thea Felmore
Friday, 15 March 2019



It was late in the evening when we sat down for a beautifully prepared three-course dinner at the impeccably decorated Manor House in Samara – a private game reserve located near Graaff-Reinet in the Great Karoo. The main topic enthusiastically making the rounds was about the much-anticipated lion release which took place earlier in the day. Well, technically it happened, though not in the way it was planned…....

Click on the title to read the rest of the story

[Lisbeth]

First lions born in Camdeboo in almost 200 years

BY HERALD REPORTER - 12 December 2019


A ]year after welcoming its founder pride of lions, Samara Private Game Reserve is celebrating the birth of its first litter of cubs
Image: MARNUS OSCHE

Just one year after welcoming its founder pride of lions, Samara Private Game Reserve is celebrating the birth of its first litter of cubs.

Born to the first wild lion and lioness to roam the Plains of Camdeboo near Graaff-Reinet in more than 180 years, the cubs represent a victory for wild lion conservation, according to Samara founder Sarah Tompkins.

“We are ecstatic about this birth,” Tompkins said.

“It’s a sign that our move to rewild the landscape to create the conditions for new lion populations has been successful.”

The birth of the cubs — believed to be a litter of three, however yet to be confirmed as the lioness has not allowed anyone to close — is significant for its contribution to wild lion conservation in a region from which lions had gone locally extinct.

Lions have come under threat globally for several reasons, including habitat loss, conflict with humans and the illegal trade in lion bones as substitutes for tiger bones in Eastern medicine.

In SA the canned lion trade, in which lions are bred and hunted in captivity, threatens the survival of the species in the wild.

There are now estimated to be just 3,000 wild lions in the country.

Professor Graham Kerley, director of the Centre for African Conservation Ecology at Nelson Mandela University, said: “Lions are the sentinels of wildness in Africa, and the success of these apex predators in our protected areas is a key indicator of the effectiveness of conservation measures.”

The latest additions to Samara’s lion population are thought to have been born in September, after a typical gestation period of 105-120 days.

For the first few weeks of their lives, lion cubs remain hidden in dense vegetation to avoid detection by potential predators.

In choosing to give birth on one of the reserve’s steep mountain slopes, their mother has given them the best chance of survival.

She has periodically moved den sites across the escarpment, not far from her hunting grounds on Samara’s plateau grasslands, where large herds of black wildebeest and blesbok abound.

The introduction of lions at the beginning of 2019 is one of several initiatives by Samara to restore the Great Karoo’s rich biodiversity.

Over the past 22 years, thousands of wild animals have been successfully reintroduced into the reserve, the Eastern Cape’s largest, including antelope, zebra, buffalo, cheetah and more recently, elephant in 2017.

The activity undertaken by Samara in recent years means the reserve — located in one of just 36 global biodiversity hotspots — is close to achieving its goal of restoring this Great Karoo ecosystem to optimal functionality.

“The birth of the first wild lion cubs in the region in almost two centuries is a wonderful milestone on our journey,” Tompkins said.

“It serves as a great incentive to continue our commitment to the preservation of this fantastically biodiverse region.”

[Lisbeth]

It would be interesting to go there

[Alf]

[Lisbeth]

Purr and simple — walking with cheetahs across the plains of the wild Great Karoo


Cheetah have been reintroduced in the Karoo for the first time in 130 years. Photos: Bridget-Hilton Barber

By Bridget Hilton-Barber | 08 Jul 2025

Purring big cats, wide open spaces and skies that go on forever – this is the perfect way to clear your mind of city clutter.
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I had spent a lot of time in the Jozi inner city, had a head full of skyscrapers and honking taxis, and was beginning to think that the fastest land mammal in the world was a Rea Vaya Bus on Commissioner Street when a colleague invited me to do the evocatively named Samara Cheetah Trail in the Great Karoo.

I had never associated the Karoo with cheetahs, but the Samara Karoo Reserve near Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape is one of the best places in the world to see these creatures that can run 80-130km/h, true claimants to the title of fastest land mammal.

It’s a glorious three-hour drive from Gqeberha to Samara. We left behind the ocean and port, the car factories and industrial zones, and headed into sheep and goat country. Angoras, merinos, dorpers. The small town of Jansenville is the centre of the country’s mohair industry.

We stopped at a sleepy shop that had lovely rustic produce, a rusty old car and squeaking windmills.


The Karoo’s vast spaces are perfect for cheetahs. (Photo: Bridget Hilton-Barber)

The road cut through vast stretches of the arid Karoo, and we turned off to Samara about 50km before Graaff-Reinet. The landscape here is heartbreakingly beautiful, set in the foothills of the Sneeuberg, a mountain arc that stretches about 200km. Such geological drama – the space, the scale, the colours of gold and ochre, purple and charcoal.

The owners of Samara, Sarah and Mark Tompkins, never even intended to live here, but then their first drive into the area changed everything.

Plains Camp is a sexy little off-the-grid spot that sleeps eight in four tents. There’s a central meet, greet and eat camp, a reservoir pool, a deck with seriously impressive views and an outdoor area for stargazing and fireside stories.

The entire Cheetah Trail is about 30km, but broken into morning and afternoon walks in different parts of the reserve. We heard lions and jackals in the night and our first morning was cold and drizzly. We knocked back some strong coffee and headed into the sunrise.

We were led by guide Chris Swanepoel and tracker Henrico Thys. Chris explained the basics: the reserve is home to the Big Five as well as 60 other mammals and more than 200 bird species. Samara has five different biomes, essentially five different vegetation types and landscapes.


Plains Camp, an off-the-grid tented camp. (Photo: Bridget Hilton-Barber)


Plains Camp. (Bridget Hilton-Barber)

We set off in single file, and within minutes our heads were giddy with the enormousness of it all, the contrast between the wild mountains beyond and the tiniest little veld grasses and succulents, the tracks and trails of creatures, the scent of a wild morning. We hadn’t gone more than 15 minutes into our walk when we came across a pair of cheetah brothers. Chris pointed out their engorged tummies – they had eaten well recently – and now they were doing a playful grooming exercise. We were so close we could hear them purring.

What a moment. These guys are descended from the very first cheetah to be reintroduced in Samara in 2004, the first in 130 years. We watched them for ages and then continued our walk, eventually reaching the edge of the legendary Plains of Camdeboo.


Plains Camp. (Photos: Bridget Hilton-Barber)

Camdeboo is the Khoikhoi name for green heights, referring to the presence of water in this arid landscape. The 1966 South African classic, The Plains of Camdeboo by Eve Palmer, is set here on Cranemere, Palmer’s family farm of five generations. It is about an entire way of life, as someone so beautifully put it, suspended between dust and sky, endurance and change.

Palmer’s recreations of the landscapes of her early home are among the finest in Karoo literature, but our bunch rapidly descended into cliché – “isn’t this just bloody gorgeous?” – followed by a few astonished expletives. And eventually a delicious silent rhythm as we walked back to camp, the sound of purring in our ears.


Cheetahs have been reintroduced in the Karoo for the first time in 130 years. (Photo: Bridget Hilton-Barber)

As we walked the reserve over the course of the weekend, the amazing scale of the Samara rewilding project unfolded. The first cheetahs in 130 years, the first elephants in 150 years, the first lions in nearly 200 years. We spotted a tail and trunk of the elephants that had recently arrived from nearby Addo Elephant National Park.

The old elephant migratory route used to come all the way up here to the Camdeboo region, then back down the Sundays River to the coast.

We saw vast herds of desert-adapted antelope – eland, oryx and springbok. We saw lions that had killed and eaten from an eland, lying in a rather inelegant fashion with their tummies to the sky, mouths open. We walked across ancient pans, among majestic giraffes and many tortoises. We walked across the plains they call the Serengeti of the South. We saw a river running for the first time in the season, after the rains of the night before.

We were supposed to spend one night under the stars in a wild camp under the eaves of the mountain, but rain stopped play, so we gathered around a fire in the camp instead and listened to Marnus Ochse, Samara’s general manager, tell us the incredible story of how you rewild an old farm.


Dinner at Plains Camp. (Photo: Bridget Hilton-Barber)

“The first thing they did after buying the farm in 1997 was let the veld rest for several years,” he said. They took off all the livestock and, over seven years, bought up 11 farms that make up the 27,000-hectare Samara. More than 200km of livestock fencing went down to create an open system again.

Elephants were reintroduced in 2017, black rhino in 2013 and lions in 2019. “The return of the first lions was incredible for Samara,” said Ochse. “When you bring back lions – apex predators – all other animal behaviour changes.

“Take jackals, for example. They are mainly scavengers, but if there are no carcasses around they become extremely good hunters. They’ll go for steenbok and springbok lambs, and for goats and sheep, which is why farmers don’t like them.”

But since lions were reintroduced, the jackals have enough food because they scavenge off the carcasses killed by lions. “So we’ve immediately seen an increase in our springbok population, the lambing especially, as well as our blesbok and steenbok population, and certain ground-dwelling birds.”


The hike is led by a guide and a tracker. (Photo: Bridget Hilton-Barber)


Guide Chris Swanepoel with a springbok leg the cheetahs never ate. (Photo: Bridget Hilton-Barber)

Ochse told us how the arrival of the lions also changed the cheetahs’ behaviour. “They were quick to learn there was another, bigger predator around. The moment we introduced the lions on top of the mountain, the cheetahs were gone. They’ve changed where they move around, and they’ve changed their hunting strategies.”

We slept with our hearts full of inspiration. And the next morning we drove across the reserve and up into the spectacular Sneeuberg mountains. The roads were steep and muddy after the rain, and we finally arrived at the very top of the mountain, greeted by lions and rhinos, to the welcoming sight of brunch and bubbles, with astonishing views of the Great Karoo stretching before us.

To think this area was once home to one of the world’s largest migrations – when millions of springbok, wildebeest, eland and quagga, an extinct type of zebra, roamed these plains in search of new pastures. There were herds of elephants, plentiful black rhinos and predators.

We popped open the bubbles to celebrate Samara’s passionate conservation undertaking that has seen the return of these species after an absence of more than 100 years. DM