Point counts will be completed for birds and detailed habitat assessments will be completed at 74 sites, each 100m X 100m in size. The point counts will be completed three times at each site (once by each of the three student groups) and diversity can then be correlated to a number of habitat variables, such as dominant woody plant species, spatial heterogeneity, levels of elephant impact, fire damage and veld condition. This survey provides a unique opportunity for volunteers to join small survey teams completing surveys on foot with armed rangers in big game areas. Volunteers need to join the survey for the full 3 weeks and will be part of a small team which will have a game viewing vehicle and be led by a bird specialist. A trained, registered and armed guide for leading walking trails will accompany each group. The bird point counts will start as close to dawn as possible and will be finished by mid morning. After a late breakfast the group will then complete a habitat assessment of one of the 100m x 100m survey squares before returning to Camp. Students will rotate between long days out in the field on the research projects and days in camp taking part in a course on issues in African Conservation. Students in camp will also have a number of duties including data input and food preparation. The bird and habitat data combined with satellite data should enable bird distributions to be modelled and population sizes estimated as well as identifying the effects of various management practices.

SK104 Biodiversity monitoring in Kruger Park (Weeks 2 - 4; Training - need to have completed SK002 bush training and savannah ecology course) 

Whilst bird surveys in the Waterberg and KZN allow data to be collected to assess the effects of various management practices and to identify temporal trends (eg global warming) on this one indicator taxa, it is not possible to use these data to infer that the same changes would necessarily occur with all other taxa unless this assumption is tested. Do fire management practices for example affect the reptile, beetle or ant communities in the same way as they do for birds? This project aims to determine the communities of other taxa in a range of different habitats and with differing levels of elephant damage and recovery from fire management within the Mdluli concession to determine whether similar trends were occurring with these other taxa as they are for the birds. Volunteers working on this project will be helping to identify ant, beetle, spider and bug communities collected from a range of habitats, installing and checking pitfall lines, undertaking transect surveys for large herbivores and cats, doing bird point counts and completing elephant habitat damage surveys. In addition this option has extensive training on conservation management issues in South Africa. Each volunteer will have the opportunity to join at least one of the foot based field activities each day and will be accompanied by experienced armed guards with a stand-by vehicle at all times, since there is a high density of game in this section of Kruger.

SW106 Bird, habitat and mammal monitoring in the Waterberg Biosphere (4, 6 or 8 week expedition in Weeks 4-10, starting with bush training in week 3 or 7; Training - need to have completed SW003 bush training and savannah ecology, available in weeks 3 and 7 in the Waterberg)

The dissertation projects based in the Waterberg (SW202 and SW203) need a lot of support from research assistants to collect the essential data over the two reserves.  For this project you would be assigned to a small team of surveyors who will spend alternate days helping with bird point counts, habitat assessments and distribution surveys of large herbivores.  The other day would be spent in the camp in lectures on African Conservation, learning data handling and analysis techniques and GIS, and data entry.  The surveys are led by Gerard Lorist who is one of the best field guides in South Africa, and this is the site where the reserve management do try and involve researchers at the site in management activities.  We can’t promise any particular activities in 2011, but the students last year were involved in fire management and collaring lion, among other things.