The two-year-old cheetah lay dying in a cage on a North West farm after she had been hunted as vermin.
But she was rescued and flown to a game reserve in the Karoo where she raised 19 cubs to adulthood - and helped save her species.
Roughly half of farmers with cheetahs on their land view them as a source of conflict, a major new study, "The distribution and numbers of cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) in southern Africa", has found. And according to the study a quarter of farmers will trap or kill the cats, even though this is illegal unless the felines pose a threat.
Every time Sibella had a litter she would present her cubs to us
— Isabelle Tompkins
Only about 3,500 free-ranging cheetahs are left in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, 19% lower than expected.
The researchers, from 16 institutions, including Duke University in the US and the University of Pretoria, recommended that cheetahs be upgraded from "vulnerable" to "endangered".
Isabelle Tompkins, of the Samara Private Game Reserve, said: "When the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Trust rescued Sibella, hunting dogs had torn away the flesh on her legs and she had been savagely beaten. She spent five hours on an operating table before she came to us in December 2003. We didn't know if she would be able to hunt again."
But Sibella proved adept at feeding herself, even using rocky gorges to ambush prey. Her cubs and their offspring have boosted South Africa's wild cheetah population by 2.4% and now roam in 15 reserves.
Tompkins said: "Every time Sibella had a litter she would present her cubs to us when they were old enough to leave the den."
The success of Sibella's dynasty is inextricably linked to the Tompkins family, who over 20 years have transformed 11 degraded farms near Graaff-Reinet into a vast reserve, fulfilling a dream of restoring wildlife to the plains of the Camdeboo.
• 1888 is when the last wild
cheetahs were seen in the Karoo
• 337 is the managed cheetah population on 55 fenced reserves in South Africa and
Malawi
— in numbers
Sibella was the first cheetah to be reintroduced in the Karoo, 130 years after the big cats were hunted out. And late last year a herd of six elephant became the first seen on the plains in 200 years. Tompkins's mother, Sarah, said she had wept with joy when the elephants arrived.
Samara hopes to bring lion back to the Karoo, and endangered species such as the Cape vulture are also returning.
Samara is the largest area set aside for conservation in the Eastern Cape and has no human pressure on its boundaries. At 27,000ha, it is bigger than a third of national parks and crosses four of the country's eight vegetation biomes.
This did not stop the shale gas (fracking) industry from targeting the land, named one of 36 global biodiversity hot spots. Sarah said they fought a legal battle against Bundu Gas and won the "first regional success against fracking".
With South African National Parks, the Tompkinses are striving to create a corridor connecting the Camdeboo and Mountain Zebra national parks, which would result in a mega-reserve of 500,000ha.
But not everyone has embraced the idea. Some farmers are concerned about cheetahs killing livestock. Vincent van der Merwe, cheetah metapopulation co-ordinator for the Endangered Wildlife Trust, said the Samara cats were blamed last month for a sheep kill when the predator was a brown hyena.
Less than a fifth of free-ranging cheetahs live in protected areas. Free-roaming cheetahs have lost 91% of their range in South Africa - the biggest threat to their survival. Samara is one of 55 reserves in South Africa and one in Malawi where they are safe.
Watching Sibella's grand-cubs posturing around a kudu carcass, they are indisputably the apex predator here. Until the lions come.
