Taking on new experiences
What made you choose an animal conservation project?
Last year was the year I turned 30, and I wanted to do something memorable to celebrate. The 125th anniversary campaign was running so strongly through Bosch UK at the time, and it was a huge and it was a lifelong ambition for me to pursue a volunteering trip. I was really nervous, especially as South Africa was a completely new country for me, and this was the first time I’d ever gone travelling on my own, but at the same time I was so excited.
I went with African Impact. They're a volunteering company that organise a lot of conservation and research projects around the African continent. The actual trip was a research program, it wasn't necessarily a ‘holiday’ in the typical sense as we had set tasks that we needed to complete every day, and I got a certificate at the end to commemorate the things I learned.
What was the day-to-day like?
You start early in the mornings because a lot of the animals will be out during dawn and dusk when it’s cooler. We would leave the camp reserve at 5AM on the game viewer 4x4, and from that point there’s a few tasks to pick up. The main one is data collection, where you’ll have a game count sheet and try to note the number of animals you see, like giraffes, elephants, raptors or Predators. We logged the animals’ gender, age, and what they were doing – for example, if they were showing aggression towards the van, or approaching a different part of the environment. We did conservation tasks in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That involves manual work, like using machetes to cut down invasive plant species that are draining too many of the nutrients from the ground, or wire-cutting metal that had been left over from the previous farmland so it doesn’t hurt the animals if they walk through it.
I was really lucky that on the day of my 30th birthday, I did a snare sweep with the reserve security, where we went on foot collecting metal rings that poachers would put down between trees so that if an animal was to walk through them, it would get tighter and tighter around their neck. Eight of us would walk through the bush in a line, and if we spotted some metal, we would pick it up. One group did catch more than fifty snares, which is scary to think about, but our group didn't get that many, which is a really good indicator that the poacher presence in the area that we were in is declining. One of the security guys let us know that when we were undertaking these tasks, we were walking where no tourist is typically permitted to go.
With the data we collected, we would then have time in the afternoon where we would enter the information we had recorded earlier into a spreadsheet which is forwarded onto the Kruger National Park officials for further analysis. In these admin sessions, we would also change the SD cards and batteries of the cameras and watch the footage back. Any animals we saw, we would tag, along with any unidentified vehicles, in case they were poachers. Some of the animals had distinctive markings, so they could be formally ID’d. That was great for tracking their activities later for research purposes. For example, through tagging, the reserve officials knew that one family of warthogs would come and go within the reserve to the same location.
We were also taught to look at tracks, like pawprints and hoof prints, and recognise them on the game drive so we could spot animals returning to specific locations. As a fun fact, leopards can release a scent that smells like popcorn, so when we were driving, if someone would say they could smell popcorn, we'd reverse back! The people who drive the game viewers were called guides, and they know everything you could ever want to know about animals. If you asked a question that they didn’t know the answer to, they'd be so proactive in finding it out the next day and sharing their knowledge. It was invaluable. The whole experience felt like I was in a documentary – it was awe inspiring. One day, we did a guided tour throughout the Kruger National Park, trying to find African wild dogs. They're very vulnerable to extinction so the chances of seeing them is quite low, but one of the guides used her expertise when we spotted a hyena walking on its own, and told us that the hyena would be following some African wild dogs, as hyenas are opportunist hunters that steal kills from other animals. We followed the direction of the hyena and came upon a wild dog that had been removed from a snare earlier that morning and was limping along. It was as if we were watching a documentary unfold in front of us. I did cry after seeing elephants in the water – they were play fighting in such a gentle and natural way. I felt so lucky that I was in tears!
What did you learn, and what did you they learn from you?
I think the organisational skills I got from Bosch are so ingrained within me now, and I always want to share them. It’s the main benefit of being within the kind of environment we have at Bosch where there’s such an overwhelming incentive to do and be better, and build and improve based on feedback. At one point, I was able to say, "we can make this better", and I sat down and reorganised their folder structure with them so they could better keep track of the camera tagging and tracks, and they're still using that folder structure now. I’m so grateful that I was able to help in some way.
Whilst I was in South Africa, it really made me realise that there's so much more out there that’s so different from what we do day-to-day in the UK. We’re all part of one global community, and I gained so much respect for the guides and the inspirational work they do. I knew before, but every animal matters.
What advice would you give to someone interested in doing something similar?
If I was to go on a big holiday again, I would always do a volunteering trip. One of the volunteers out there said it was about making memories, not money, and it was so true. The time you give up, you would have inevitably spent on something else, and maybe it wouldn’t have meant as much to you. Those kinds of opportunities we had, like being four feet away from a lion, in it's natural habitat they’re irreplaceable.