African Conservation Experience
Organisation Summary:
Conservation work placements on Game Reserves in Southern Africa giving you hands-on experience with Africa’s wildlife in its natural habitat. You will be working with game rangers, wildlife vets, biologists and many other committed conservationists.
The programmes vary across the 12 or so game reserves including working on wildlife rehabilitation and endangered species breeding projects. You may assist the wildlife vet with darting rhino for relocation or elephant for fitting tracking collars. Game capture, tagging, wildlife veterinary work, treatment of injured animals and re-release, anti-poaching patrols, game counts and game monitoring may be part of the work programme.
Accreditations: ATOL, Year Out Group
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Gap Year Case Study:
Nikki Stew – Conservation, Africa
My Garonga Experience…
I was a student in Garonga for three months this summer, and had what is definitely one of the most amazing experiences of my life! Living in the middle of the bush was a fantastic chance to really be part of nature - the perfect setting for a conservation project.
Personally, my favourite part of our conservation work was on the hyena research; studying and monitoring the different individuals on the reserve. Despite involving many very long nights sitting at den sites and by fresh kills, seeing and hearing the hyenas as they called from afar and then came in was simply breath-taking. Their smell when they came close to the vehicle was also pretty breath-taking - but for different reasons! We were able to work out the hierarchy within the clan and, as we learnt to recognise and name individuals, we could see one of Africa's top predators in such close quarters. They even raided the bins at the farmhouse and tried to make a snack of the farm dog 'Jacket'!
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