2025 Dates
2 weeks: 1 week terrestrial & 1 week marine – 21 June – 4 July 2025
2 weeks: 1 week terrestrial & 1 week marine – 28 June – 11 July 2025
2 weeks: 1 week terrestrial & 1 week marine – 12 July – 25 July 2025
3 weeks: 2 weeks terrestrial & 1 week marine – 12 July – 1 August 2025
4 weeks: 2 weeks terrestrial & 2 weeks marine – 21 June – 18 July 2025
Closed:
2 weeks: 1 week terrestrial & 1 week marine – 26 July – 8 August 2025
4 weeks: 2 weeks terrestrial & 2 weeks marine – 12 July – 8 August 2025
KwaZulu-Natal teams
The KwaZulu-Natal teams are based in the Somkhanda Game Reserve, where you will be accommodated in a tented, fenced camp. This reserve is community owned, home to the Big 5 (lion, leopard, buffalo, rhino and elephant) and stretches across 12 000 hectares of natural Zululand Bushveld. The reserve management are monitoring the effectiveness of having a designated conservation area which isn’t accessible by vehicle, and the distribution patters of the animals across the reserve. Opwall teams are assisting local researchers to assess the success of this for South African conservation and provide the reserve management with the empirical data they need to make informed decisions.
You will spend half of your time in the field, helping with vehicle-based distance sampling of large mammals. You will also be working on foot, completing biodiversity assessments of birds and vegetation, estimating the level of fire and herbivory impacts on vegetation across the whole reserve. The rest of your time will be spent in camp where you will have daily lectures on “An Introduction to African wildlife conservation and management”. You will also assist with the analysis of camera trap data from an extensive network of cameras placed across the reserve to capture evidence of illusive and nocturnal species.
Sodwana Bay Diving Centre
At this centre you will complete a PADI Open Water dive training course or an Indian Ocean reef ecology course with practicals by diving (if already trained) or snorkelling. Our marine base is a short drive to the beach or pool, snorkelling and diving take place within the iSamangaliso Wetland Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Operation Wallacea and our partners, Wildlife and Ecological Investments (WEI), coordinate large-scale research programmes to provide an empirical backbone for key conservation projects in South Africa. Our main aim is to assist conservation managers with pressing large-scale issues that they do not necessarily have the resources to address themselves. The South Africa research programme covers a series of reserves across the country, each using slightly different management strategies to conserve wildlife in their reserves. Big game areas in South Africa are fenced to avoid the spread of disease and conflicts between communities and dangerous animals. However, in reserves surrounded by densely populated areas such as Somkhanda Game Reserve, human-wildlife conflict can be a major challenge. Here, our research teams are looking at the extent of this conflict with a special focus on large mammal species. Large mammal distributions are monitored regularly through game transects, and nocturnal mammal distributions are assessed using a matrix of camera traps set up throughout the reserve. By combining this information with our knowledge of areas of dense human activity, we can begin to understand how human disturbance can alter large mammal movement and behaviour.
The restriction of natural movement caused by fences can also lead to locally dense mammal populations with high levels of vegetation impact. Elephants, for example, are ecosystem engineers and their impact can alter vegetation structure and composition. By directly monitoring feeding impact on vegetation and its knock-on effects to other taxa, such as birds, our teams can assist the reserve managers to better understand how elephants can affect long-term change in the ecosystem.
Most of our volunteers fundraise for their expedition costs. Find out more.
Climate
Our expeditions run during the South African winter, so in Somkhanda temperatures can drop as low as 0-2 degrees at night. It is also dry season, however, so the chances of rain are slim here and days are usually sunny and warm with temperatures up to 18-22 degrees. The temperatures are generally warmer at night in Sodwana, and the sun can be quite strong when out all day at the beach.
Fitness level required
Low. There are some short hikes over rough terrain, but most of the work is in or close to the game-viewer vehicles.
Creature comforts
In Somkhanda you will be staying in large safari-style tents with bunk beds and large, structured tents are used for the kitchen and communal areas. Sodwana accommodation is in dorm style rooms with beds. All sites have hot running showers, flushing toilets and access to electricity for large portions of the day. There is very little phone signal in Somkhanda, or the camp in Sodwana Bay, but the beach has better phone signal. No sites have access to wifi.
Find out all about how you could fundraise for an expedition.
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