Inkwenkwezi Private Game Reserve, is located approximately 30 km north-east of East London, and is situated within an area of 100 km² encompassing five different biome

Biome

Biomes are climatically and geographically defined as similar climatic conditions on the Earth, such as communities of plants, animals, and soil organisms, and are often referred to as ecosystems. Some parts of the earth have more or less the same kind of abiotic and biotic factors spread over a...

s in the wild coast

Wild Coast Region, Eastern Cape

The Wild Coast is one of the four regions of the Eastern Cape, a province of South Africa. The region stretches from its border with Buffalo City in the south to the Mthamvuna River near Port Edward in the north...

 region of South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

's Eastern Cape

Eastern Cape

The Eastern Cape is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are Port Elizabeth and East London. It was formed in 1994 out of the "independent" Xhosa homelands of Transkei and Ciskei, together with the eastern portion of the Cape Province...

 province. It is home to all of the Big Five game

Big Five game

The phrase Big Five game was coined by white hunters and refers to the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot. The term is still used in most tourist and wildlife guides that discuss African wildlife safaris. The collection consists of the lion, African elephant, cape buffalo,...

; namely lion

Lion

The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...

, elephant

Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...

, buffalo

African Buffalo

The African buffalo, affalo, nyati, Mbogo or Cape buffalo is a large African bovine. It is not closely related to the slightly larger wild Asian water buffalo, but its ancestry remains unclear...

 leopard

Leopard

The leopard , Panthera pardus, is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera, the other three being the tiger, lion, and jaguar. The leopard was once distributed across eastern and southern Asia and Africa, from Siberia to South Africa, but its...

 and rhinoceros

Rhinoceros

Rhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....

; as well as giraffe

Giraffe

The giraffe is an African even-toed ungulate mammal, the tallest of all extant land-living animal species, and the largest ruminant...

, zebra

Zebra

Zebras are several species of African equids united by their distinctive black and white stripes. Their stripes come in different patterns unique to each individual. They are generally social animals that live in small harems to large herds...

, a variety of antelope

Antelope

Antelope is a term referring to many even-toed ungulate species indigenous to various regions in Africa and Eurasia. Antelopes comprise a miscellaneous group within the family Bovidae, encompassing those old-world species that are neither cattle, sheep, buffalo, bison, nor goats...

, and many other smaller species.

History

Inkwenkwezi, which translates from Xhosa

Xhosa language

Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said...

 to mean "under the stars", grew out of a dream of the Umtata born Stanton brothers, Graham and Keith. Graham Stanton purchased the first of several properties in the Cintsa

Cintsa

Chintsa is a village in the Wild Coast region of the Eastern Cape province, South Africa. It is situated 38 km north-east from East London, at the mouth of the Cintsa river. There are two resort areas catering to tourists interested in sea fishing to the east and west of the river. The...

 valley area which were eventually combined to form Inkwenkwezi, in 1983.

Species

• Inkwenkwezi is home to several lions, four of which are extremely rare white lions. The two current adults were acquired as cubs on July 17, 2004. One the brown females carries 50% of the white gene
  Gene
  A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
  
   and has had both brown and white litters. In 2010 she had two white cubs.

External links

• Inkwenkwezi Private Game Reserve
• Global White Lion Protection Trust
• Eastern Cape Provincial Government

See also: List of conservation areas of South Africa