Operation Wallacea

This course is run in reserves which contain many large and dangerous animals (e.g. rhino, buffalo, hippo, elephant, lion, etc.). One of the objectives of the course is to orientate new volunteers in the African bush and to develop the skills and confidence necessary to participate in the surveys on foot in the reserve. Important rules and etiquette concerning safety procedures on how to conduct yourself in a dangerous game area and what to do if the group walks into dangerous animals, such as buffalo, elephant and lion are covered. Training is also given in animal behaviour, how to track animals and to identify safe and danger zones around large game species when encountered and navigation using GPS and other techniques. Identification training is given for large mammals from sightings, spoor (tracks) and scat (droppings), common birds and their calls, major vegetation types and trees. An additional objective of this course is to gain an understanding of savannah ecology and management. A qualified and experienced Trails Guide and Armed Ranger lead each group of participants in the field. The course includes daily field visits together with in-camp lectures and practicals.

Marine training courses

MM004 PADI Open Water Dive Training (Weeks 3, 5, 7, 9)

This one-week dive training course is free to Operation Wallacea research assistants or Dissertation students except for the costs of the PADI registration card ($30) and the Open Water Crew Pack. The course comprises theory lectures, confined water training skills in a pool and 4 open water dives on the reefs to a maximum depth of 18m. Completion of this course will give you an internationally-recognised diving qualification and is an ideal way to wind down after a few weeks in the bush whilst joining some of the most exciting diving in the Southern Indian Ocean.

MM005 Southern Indian Ocean Reef Ecology Course (Weeks 3 - 10; need to be dive qualified or have completed MM004 if doing the practicals by diving)

This course is designed to teach participants how to identify the main species of fish, macro-invertebrates and corals likely to be encountered and focuses on giving skills in data analysis of the video and photographic footage. The course comprises 8 lectures and practicals either by diving or snorkelling or in the computer lab. At the end of the course, you should be able to identify hard and soft corals and sponges to genera level, identify coral growth forms, common macro-invertebrates, most of the common species of reef fish and to complete video and photographic data analysis with a reasonable level of accuracy. In addition, if you are diving for the practicals, your buoyancy skills should have improved to a level where you should be able to participate in dive-based biological surveys.

Research options

Bush options

ST101 Elephant Impact Surveys in Thanda (Weeks 2 - 4 & 6 - 8; need to have completed ST001)

The Intibane Reserve became incorporated with the adjoining Thanda Reserve in 2009 and the fences were dropped. Thanda is a Big Five reserve and the elephants in that reserve began to move gradually onto the Intibane land, which previously held no elephant or lion. Also, in 2011, the Kings Land, another area adjoining Thanda, was leased and 17 elephants were released. By 2012, the fence between the Kings Land and Thanda is scheduled to be dropped. Operation Wallacea and their South African partners, Wildlife & Ecological Investments, have been asked to provide baseline data to see how the dropping of fencelines will affect the habitat of the newly colonised areas by elephants. Managers are also very interested in our teams continuing and analysing the bi-monthly game counts across the whole reserve to determine how various herbivores and predators colonise new areas. The elephant impact survey provides a unique opportunity for volunteers to join small survey teams completing surveys on foot with armed rangers in big game areas and have wildlife encounter experiences not normally available to visitors. Detailed measurements of grass volume, tree and shrub size structure, percentage encroachment of bushes and levels of elephant browsing on trees and bushes using the Walker scale will be completed on study plots across the whole reserve. In addition, perpendicular 1km transects will be completed across the whole reserve to assess the percentage of trees and shrubs in the most damaged categories on the Walker scale so that contours enclosing areas of equal damage can be plotted for the reserve. In areas where the elephants have caused significant habitat change this may also have an impact on the diversity of other taxa. Birds are used as indicators of change and at each of the habitat sites, early morning bird point counts will be completed so that the density data for each species can be compared with previous years. Students will spend half their time in the field on the research projects and whilst in camp will take part in an African Wildlife Conservation course which goes into much more detail about how wildlife resources are managed and what major conservation issues are faced in the region.

SM102 Elephant Impact Surveys in the Mdluli Concession, Kruger Park (Week 2; need to have completed SM002)

This project is similar to ST101 in that students working on this project will be helping with assessing the impact of elephants on vegetation in the south west part of Kruger Park. These data, combined with those collected at Thanda by research assistant teams, Welgevonden and Pongola reserves by Dissertation/Thesis Students and Manyeleti by General Surveyor teams, are helping to define levels of vegetation damage with different stocking densities of elephants. In all these other study areas, the elephant impacts are combined with fire management of the grassland. However, in the Mdluli Concession the local communities who own the land do not want any fire management because parts of the grassland are cut by hand each year to produce thatching materials. Volunteers working on this project will spend half their time in the field 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. For the other half of their time, they will complete a course on African Wildlife Conservation.

Marine options

MM103 Assessing Reef Status (Weeks 4 - 10; need to be dive qualified and have completed MM005)

The reefs in southern Mozambique are under increasing pressure from tourism development and growing numbers of artisanal and sport fishers. There are still pristine areas of reef but other areas are clearly beginning to be impacted. Operation Wallacea is running a series of annual surveys that will help identify the relative importance of each of the reef systems for reef fish communities and also provide data to quantify changes over time. In order to avoid data quality problems between years, the data are being collected in a way that is independent of the skill of the surveyor to avoid variation in the skills of individual surveyors between years masking any underlying trends. Reef fish communities are being recorded from replicate transects on each reef system using a twin video system developed by the University of Western Australia and software which combines the images and enables species identifications and fork lengths to be measured precisely. Coral cover and community structure of hard and soft corals are being assessed using video surveys of transects. Volunteers on this project will be diving to help collect these data but will also be spending considerable amounts of time helping with the data analysis in the on-site laboratory. The 2012 programme will repeat the 2009-2011 surveys of all the main reefs in the Ponta do Ouro area to identify changes over this period. Volunteers joining this project at any time will have the chance to experience some of the most exciting diving available worldwide with sightings of manta rays, sharks, whales and dolphins a possibility, as well as gaining some excellent field skills in reef species data analysis.