Overview

Witness African bush elephants in the wild while working with an international team on ongoing wildlife conservation efforts AND get career training from Conservation Careers!

Travel to a private South African wildlife reserve, an hour from the Kruger National Park, to track majestic herds of African elephant through the wide expanses of the savannah landscape alongside an international team of staff and volunteers conducting a range of wildlife conservation research projects.

For many, witnessing a herd of elephants in the heart of the Southern African landscape for the first time is a life-altering experience. However, unlike a conventional safari tourism trip, this program allows you to contribute directly to ongoing elephant research and conservation, in partnership with Elephant’s Alive, an organisation that has been actively involved in elephant conservation for over two decades. In addition you will live and work with participants and field staff from all over the world on a wide range of other long-term conservation initiatives.

Elephants are incredibly important to the health of the ecosystem, ensuring the distribution of plants throughout a habitat and uncovering water sources in dry times that other animals can use later. However, they can also be destructive to a habitat if their populations are not well managed, due to their habit of pulling up roots of plants to eat them.

You will work with a trained researcher, to track elephants through the bush on safari vehicles, noting the number of individuals, their age and sex, as well as their behaviour and any identifying factors. In addition, you might also contribute to an ongoing project by Elephants Alive focused on mitigating the impact of elephants on unique native plant species at risk like the famous baobab, marula, and star chestnut trees.

Please note you can spend up to 12 hours a day collecting data which can be tiring, in the heat of the African sun.

Highlights

• Spot African elephants in the wild while volunteering to assist with wildlife conservation efforts.
• Go on a wildlife safari adventure in a private South African nature reserve.
• Develop an in-depth understanding of complex South African ecosystems
• In your free time, visit the famous Kruger National Park, only an hour away from where we are based or visit the nearby Drakensberg Mountains where awe-inspiring vistas are afforded over the Blyde River Canyon
• Live and work alongside Field Guide Association of South Africa, FGASA, qualified guides, growing personally and professionally by learning from their experiences.
• Sleep under the star-filled Southern night sky, its beauty enhanced by the lack of light pollution, and wake to a golden African dawn.

Further programme details

You will also have the opportunity to collect data on a variety of animals, including elephant, lions, leopards and cheetah. This information is used by reserve authorities to build up an accurate picture of the impact of predators on prey populations, determine the movement of animals, their health and social structures. The collated data helps them then maintain a healthy balance of these natural resources within the reserve, assisting with the conservation of some of Africa’s most important ecosystems. Other research project you might get involved in involve studying cheetah feeding behaviour, eradicating invasive vegetation in the area, and conducting environmental education presentations. Throughout your time on this project you will develop an in-depth understanding of complex South African ecosystems as well as current, local conservation issues and strategies.

Conservation Careers has teamed up with an award-winning, mission-driven organisation with a team of passionate experts across the globe who will make your experience a truly unforgettable one.

Founded in 1998, they run programs in 21 locations, in 13 countries around the world, each aligned to the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as well as the objectives of local partners. They welcome participants from all around the world and help facilitate their development into global citizens. This is how they achieve their mission of building a global network of people united by their passion to make a difference.

Their commitment to running high-quality sustainable development and experiential education programs has earned them recognition from numerous organizations such as Panthera, the Seychelles Parks & Gardens Authority, as well as Stanford, NYU, Duke, and Ohio State.

If you register your interest below, you’ll put you in touch with our partner to take the booking and to plan your trip!

To see all our Conservation Careers Internship opportunities, please click here.

Location and life on base

Your Impact

All of our programs have short, mid and long-term objectives that fit with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or UN SDGs. This enables us to report on our collaborative impact across the world in a streamlined manner, measuring which UN SDGs we are making a substantial contribution to. Furthermore, this will help our local partners and communities measure and visualise their contribution to the UN SDGs.

Upon arrival to base, you will be educated about the history of the UN SDGs. You will learn about the specific goals of your location, the long-, mid- and short-term objectives, and also clarification of how your personal, shorter-term involvement contributes to these goals on a global level.

Our aim is to educate you on local and global issues, so that you continue to act as active global citizens after your program, helping to fulfil our mission of building a global network of people united by their passion to make a difference.

Many of Africa’s wildlife species are under threat. Private reserves, like Karongwe, where we run our conservation project, are a haven for species at risk. Karongwe is located within the UNESCO protected Kruger to Canyons Biosphere Reserve. This biosphere represents only 1.4% of South Africa’s land, but contains 55% of the total natural life found here.

Experiences

During your program, you’ll also have the opportunity to experience tailor-made adventure and wellness activities. These have been specially designed to further immerse you in the diversity and richness of the habitats and cultures around you.

Exclusive local  experiences

• Learn to make a potjiekos
• Develop your wildlife photography skills
• Discover the medicinal uses of indigenous plants
• Master basic bush survival skills
• Watch a magical sunset at a watering hole
• Enjoy a night sky safari

Karongwe Nature and Wildlife Reserve was once made up of individual farms. In 1998 the landowners banded together to create a 8,000 hectare wildlife reserve. We were brought onto Karongwe in 2001 to monitor the large predators and herbivores on the reserve. This helps reserve management to understand the impact of predators on prey and maintain a healthy ecosystem by ensuring a balance of natural resources. Predators are often tracked using telemetry, or monitored using camera trapping, to learn how they use the space within the park, what their feeding behaviour is like, how they interact with one another and other predators. Herbivores might be counted, their numbers, age, and sex listed, and their impact on vegetation noted. This data is presented to Karongwe management and landowners on a weekly, quarterly and annual basis.  We also assist with anti-poaching efforts by compiling ID kits of any rhinos we come across and maintaining the park’s fences and roads. We also assist with removing old farm infrastructure and invasive alien plant species as well as working on soil rehabilitation to help with habitat recovery.

Cheetah Research and Conservation

Our cheetah research is conducted in conjunction with the Endangered Wildlife Trust, a conservation organisation who currently manage SA’s cheetah metapopulation. Cheetahs are a species listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List Of Threatened Species. They are a rather fragile species as they naturally have a low genetic diversity and are not able to compete well with other larger, stronger predators like lions and hyenas. Our study mainly focuses on how cheetahs make use of their kill by setting up camera traps near their fresh kill to see how much time the cheetahs spend on their kill and what potentially encourages them to leave. This helps to know how they are dealing with competition with other predators. We also collect data on breeding success.

Elephant Vegetation Impact Mitigation

In partnerships with Elephants Alive, who have been actively involved in elephant conservation for the past 20 years, we also conduct surveys of the impact elephants have on the local vegetation. Due to their habit of pulling up trees to eat the top leaves and roots, a large population of elephants can have a negative impact on a small environment, especially for species like the marula tree. This might involve monitoring sensitive areas of the reserve and the movements of elephant groups, developing elephant identification kits, and analysing the effectiveness of elephant vegetation destruction methods.

Bird Research and Conservation

We also contribute to the South African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP2), the most important bird monitoring project in Southern Africa, and its largest citizen science database. Birds are appropriate indicators of ecosystem health because they are popular and well studied. The availability of significant, long-term datasets in South Africa makes birds a good choice for early-warning system for climate change impacts and other systematic, ecosystem-wide threats to broader biodiversity. The number of critically endangered birds in South Africa has increased from 5 in 2000 to 13 in 2017. One group in particular features particularly dramatic statistics, 22 of the 79 raptors occurring in the North-Eastern region of the country are now considered threatened. Of concern are the low numbers of scavenging raptors. Most of South Africa’s vulture species, as well as the Tawny Eagle and the Bateleur, two obligate scavengers, are listed as endangered or critically endangered. In December 2016, SABAP2 featured nine million records across 17339 pentads, five minutes of latitude by five minutes of longitude, squares with sides of roughly 9 km, in South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland. Selection of sites and habitats critical to bird conservation rely on this data. All other conservation initiatives depend on the results of the bird atlas, to a greater or lesser extent. On cannot determine the conservation status of a species unless you know its range and how this is changing.

Environmental Education

We also conduct environmental education programs at several schools in the area.

As the requirements of our partners change over time so do the details of our projects. We make ourselves available for conservation-focused mini-projects. This might include documenting bird of prey nesting sites or the creating a list of micro fauna species in the park. In the past we have partnered with a range of conservation organisations like Panthera and academic institutions like the University of Cape Town, Pretoria University, and Bournemouth University. Exact project details are also always subject to change due to weather conditions, time of year and animal movements.

As such, the specific United Nations Sustainable Development Goal we work on in Limpopo is #15, Life On Land.

Project objectives

Exploration

Cultural immersion

BONUS! Conservation Career Kick-Starter online training programme (worth £295)

Do you want to spend your career helping wildlife to flourish, but are feeling a little lost, confused or disillusioned?

Start your career in wildlife conservation with a unique programme of training, support community & jobs from Conservation Careers!

The Conservation Career Kick-Starter is a proven step-by-step system to get clear, get ready, and get hired as a professional conservationist.

Whether you’re at university and planning your next steps, a graduate in the job hunt or working in an unrelated job but interested to switch into conservation, this course is designed to help you.

After going through the course, you’ll have created a personal career plan which will give you confidence in your job hunt and will make everything quicker, simpler and more fun!

All you need to do is register your interest in the project below, and if you choose to make a booking we’ll save a place for you on the Kick-Starter when you get back from your placement.

Included with the Kick-Starter is a year’s full-access to the world’s biggest conservation job board with over 15,000 jobs, plus access to our private online support community, CC Pro.

Duration, dates and cost

• 1 week – £2,445
• 2 weeks – £2,795
• 4 weeks – £3,545
• 6 weeks – £4,295
• 8 weeks – £4,995
• 10 weeks – £5,745
• 12 weeks – £6,495

Start dates are as follows:

• 2023: 22 Jul; 05 Aug; 19 Aug; 02 Sep; 16 Sep; 30 Sep; 14 Oct; 28 Oct; 11 Nov; 25 Nov; 09 Dec; 23 Dec

What’s included

What’s not included

Reserve your place or ask a question