Kingston goes South Africa

One of the KUBAG volunteers spent some time in South Africa this summer doing conservation work. She's been kind enough to write about her experiences, and how she funded her work, to hopefully inspire any of you who are hoping to do similar things between terms :)

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My name is Eike, and I am a second-year student in Biological Science with a focus on Environmental Sciences. Last summer I applied for an internship in South Africa for during summer and got the post as an Elephant Monitoring Assistant for 3 months - wohooo!

What company did you do this with and how did you find them?

I worked at LEO Africa, a wildlife monitoring company, which hosts volunteers from all over the world to help with their conservation work at the Marakele National park. I follow them on Facebook as I volunteered with them before and saw, that they were advertising this post.

What was your job?

My job was to help the Marakele National Park undertake a census of their elephant population. Elephants are considered a keystone species, due to the large impact they have on their environment. Without elephants or in some cases with too many elephants the ecosystem can get out of balance with disastrous consequences for animals and plants.

The Marakele National Park is a rather small National Park in South Africa and its elephant population is flourishing, as the park offers enough water, food and safety from poachers. So much, that the park now has too many elephants.

These elephants are destroying trees and bushes by a rate faster than they can grow back and are therefore negatively impacting the environment.

My job was to verify the number of elephants previously counted via a helicopter search and define their herd structures. With this information the park management can decide how many elephants they want to relocate and which elephants belong together as not to disrupt the herd structures.

Over 3 months I went out every second day with a ranger and tracked elephants. We recorded our sightings and back at base I would meticulously go through the pictures and identify every elephant. Each elephant has an ID Kit, which summarizes his various characteristics like notches in ears or broken tusks.

Tough work, but it got easier and easier with time and by the end of my stay I could identify elephants just by sight in the field, which felt fantastic!

How did you fund your trip?

I applied for the Philip Russell Travel scholarship and was awarded £1500 for my trip. Additionally I started a Crowdfunding campaign for friends and family, which raised a further £250.

I promised every donor a hand painted Thank-you card and this developed into a little small business on its own over a while, with me selling my paintings to fellow volunteers. This raised enough funds to pay for the rest of my costs.

Overall I paid around £2500 for flight, expenses, accommodation and food.

How did you enjoy your time?

Overall I had a wonderful time: I got to know the parks elephant really well and was able to study their behavior.

I absolutely fell in love with elephants as a species, because of their intelligence and social structures. I cannot wait to get back to Africa one day to see those grey giants again!

But I also saw many other incredible animals: leopards, lions, rhinos, porcupines, pangolins and many many more. I will always look back fondly on this summer and can highly recommend doing something like this.

If you want to read more about my trip, please feel free to visit my blog: www.mightyeiky.wordpress.com or visit me on Instagram to see more pictures: @themightyeiky