The damage done to the Mapungubwe World Heritage Site by mining operations at the Vele Colliery in Limpopo was already irreversible, environmental groups said on Wednesday.

Several environmental groups have brought an application in the High Court in Johannesburg for an interdict to stop Coal of Africa (CoAL) from constructing an open-cast coal mine about six kilometres from the site.

The Green Scorpions ordered the company to stop construction at the mine on Tuesday, as it had allegedly not completed the necessary Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA).

The environmental groups behind the court action were "delighted" that construction activities appeared to have stopped, their representative BirdLife SA executive director Mark Anderson said on Wednesday.

The damage done to this site on a daily basis over the past few months "is largely irreversible", he said.

The groups include the Mapungubwe Action Group, the Endangered Wildlife Trust, the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists, Peace Parks Foundation, World Wide Fund for Nature South Africa, BirdLife South Africa and the Wilderness Foundation South Africa.

They are being represented in court by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies.

Anderson said they were concerned about the protection and maintenance of the environmental integrity of the area in and around Mapungubwe for current and future generations.

He said the Vele mining area was situated on 8500 hectares and lay less than six kilometres from the borders of the Mapungubwe National Park.

It was next to the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape, which is a World Heritage Site.

"The area is a national treasure given its enormous historical and archaeological significance as well as the abundant biodiversity that exists in this ecologically sensitive landscape," said Anderson.

"The significance of the area has been recognised by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana and in 2006, the three countries entered into an agreement to establish and develop a Transfrontier Conservation Area with the Mapungubwe National Park at its core."

Earlier on Wednesday, Coal of Africa chief executive officer John Wallington said in a statement that the company "ceased certain activities at Vele" after receiving a compliance notice from the department of environmental affairs.

The notice put a halt to all construction work on roads at the mine and use of existing roads, including access roads, and prohibited the expansion of the mine's development footprint.

Departmental spokesman Albi Modise said on Tuesday the company was ordered to stop most construction activities on the site within 24-hours of receiving the notice.

The mine had to appoint an independent environmental consultant within five days to assess the mine's compliance with environmental legislation.

Modise said the company was issued with the mining rights for the Vele mine in March, but did not get the go-ahead from the department of environmental affairs to proceed with construction.

"They needed to go through an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process and we think they haven't done all they were supposed to do in this process," he said.

Wallington said all the mine's activities were within its mining rights, issued by the department of mineral resources.

"The company is nonetheless complying with that notice as required and confirms it has ceased certain activities at Vele," he said.

He said the company was working with the department of environmental affairs to sort out the problems.