The challenges of the past, exacerbated by a continuing drought – for seven years, almost no rainfall has been recorded here – and the devastating economic impacts of COVID-19, have created an opportunity to buy out many of these last remaining livestock farms. Here in the pro-Namib landscape, which is well suited to environmental conservation, the new reserve will restore this land to nature.

The new reserve also reinforces a critical initiative of the Greater Sossusvlei-Namib Landscape Association – to open up the Namib Desert all the way to the Great Escarpment, creating a Fence-Free Namib. Funded in part with support from The Nature Conservancy, the Sossusvlei-Namib Landscape Association is committed to addressing imminent threats to habitat and species loss at a landscape level.

100s of km of fencing have been removed and 100s more will be removed in the new reserve.

Neighbouring landowners have started to dismantle their border fencing in accordance with a Memorandum of Agreement, and this historic effort is opening corridors for wildlife to return once more to their traditional movement patterns.