Projects
Choose how you’d like to make an impact
You can support the Conservation Heritage Foundation in two ways:
by contributing to the Foundation’s work as a whole, or by directing your donation to a specific conservation project that matters most to you.
Each project below represents a critical conservation priority — from protecting threatened species to expanding and strengthening protected areas across South Africa.
Blue Swallow conservation
Supporting the protection of one of South Africa’s most threatened bird species through habitat conservation, monitoring, and regional collaboration.
Vulture Conservation
Safeguarding endangered vulture species by reducing key threats, supporting monitoring, and working with communities to protect these vital scavengers.
Vultures are among South Africa’s most threatened groups of birds, yet they play a vital ecological and socio-economic role. Of the nine vulture species recorded in the country, seven are listed as Endangered or Critically Endangered, with populations declining by between 60% and 90% over the past three decades.
The primary threats include poisoning, collisions with power infrastructure, habitat loss, and illegal harvesting for the traditional medicine trade. Poisoning — both intentional and secondary — remains the most serious threat, often killing large numbers of vultures at a single carcass.
Vultures provide an essential ecosystem service as highly efficient scavengers. By rapidly removing carcasses from the landscape, they help prevent the spread of diseases such as anthrax, rabies, and botulism, while reducing the need for costly carcass disposal.
Funding for this project supports community outreach and education in the greater Zululand region, satellite tracking to better understand vulture movements and identify key breeding areas, and the establishment of safe vulture feeding sites to reduce exposure to threats.
Biodiversity Offset banking
A secure, transparent mechanism that ensures biodiversity offset funds are responsibly managed and delivered to protected areas over the full offset period.
Protected Area expansion
Helping to secure new protected areas by supporting conservation organisations and landowners through effective biodiversity stewardship approaches.
Protected areas play a critical role in securing South Africa’s natural ecological infrastructure — the ecosystems, species, and processes that underpin human well-being and economic resilience.
Strong evidence shows that protected areas are one of the most effective tools for slowing biodiversity loss, with many species surviving today only because of formal protection. Securing new protected areas is therefore not only an environmental priority, but a matter of long-term human well-being.
In South Africa, limited public funding means that alternative, cost-effective approaches are essential. Biodiversity Stewardship has emerged as a highly effective mechanism, enabling private and communal landowners to formally protect priority conservation land while retaining ownership.
Donations to this project support conservation organisations working with landowners to secure new protected areas, helping to protect critical biodiversity while strengthening landscape-scale conservation outcomes.
Management Support to Protected Areas
Providing long-term technical and practical support to landowners and managers to ensure protected areas are effectively conserved and maintained.
Securing protected area status is only the first step in effective conservation. Ongoing management support is essential to ensure that conservation commitments are practical, sustainable, and deliver real biodiversity outcomes.
Under the Biodiversity Stewardship programme, management responsibility is often assigned to landowners who are not trained conservation professionals. Without long-term support, these agreements risk becoming ineffective.
Landowners face complex challenges such as invasive species control, fire management, habitat restoration, and compliance with legal requirements. Conservation authorities and NGOs play a vital role in providing technical guidance, training, and support.
Funding for this project enables the Conservation Heritage Foundation to support landowners and managers with the resources and expertise they need to maintain ecological integrity, build confidence, and ensure that protected areas remain effective over time.
Photo credits: Blue Swallow page – Richard Flack, Vulture photo – Marietjie Froneman