The Diamond Route
We don’t just support conservation, we live it.
Inspired by the natural world from the very start, De Beers has been managing nature reserves around our operations for over 120 years, making them amongst the oldest private nature reserves in southern Africa. Twenty years ago, these properties were brought together to form the Diamond Route, with a commitment that they would support biodiversity conservation, education, and sustainability opportunities. Today the Diamond Route is made up of eight nature and heritage sites, owned and managed by De Beers, and its team of over 100 ecology specialists managing over 500,000 acres of land for conservation. In fact, for every acre of land we mine, we set aside six for conservation.
As a result, these areas have become safe havens for the continent’s most iconic species. With more than 500 types of birds, 55 mammal species (including the Big Five: lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and buffalo), and more butterfly species in just one reserve than the whole of the UK, they play a vitally important role in conservation, even helping to rewild and repopulate other areas. In the last 20 years, they have also hosted over 100 innovative research programmes, ecotourism activities and ground-breaking conservation initiatives including, what we called Moving Giants, the furthest elephant translocation ever attempted
But we need to keep pushing further, so over the next 20 years we’ve committed to extend our efforts as part of our commitment to Building Forever, with a focus on land stewardship, livelihoods and skills development, youth education and wildlife conservation.
