The Shamwari Game Reserve Conservation Volunteer Programme offers a once in a lifetime chance to get behind the scenes and involved with the conservation efforts of the Game Reserve. Wildlife conservation volunteers take part in game monitoring, assisting at the Born Free big cat sanctuary, looking after orphaned animals at the wildlife rehabilitation centre and much more. Shamwari, meaning “my friend” in Shona, is the pinnacle of game reserves and home to the coveted Big five on one of the largest conservation initiatives in Southern Africa, and is located in a malaria-free environment.
In the morning we do ground clearing which means that we got out with machetes, clearing the road. We basically clear the roads not obviously just for the vehicles but to actually get access to the reserve so that we can get into parts for anti poaching purposes. Then obviously the other aspect of it is to actually do a lot of monitoring. So for instance we do predator monitoring, large herbivore monitoring would be the rhinos, the elephants. All that is collecting data on their movement, their feeding patterns and generally getting as much data as we can which then helps us to make management decisions to actually run the reserve. The rehab centre’s main function is to get the animals in and then to try and get them back out into the wild again.
An average day is hard labor in one half of the day and the other half of the day is is taken over by the monitoring side of stuff and and picking up locations of species. For the rhino, obviously the most important part of that is to know where they are on a regular basis so that we can map their movements. When we're monitoring, it's not just a matter of sitting on a sighting, you're not here for game drives, you're here on the basis of being able to look out and look out for the animals. If we go predator monitoring, more often than not we're looking at the health of the cheetahs or the leopard or the lions and you can often find a problem with animals when you're doing the monitoring because you get to know them and see them. So you spot whether they've got a limp and you spot whether there's an eye that's sore and those sort of pieces of information are valuable to the wildlife team.
Q: If you do find that an animal has got an injury would you be involved in taking it to the vets?
That's the vet’s call, that's totally the vet’s call. More often than not the lead coordinator will get in touch with our wildlife vet, advise of the problem. He'll probably go and suss it out himself so
he'll go and have a look first and then manage the treatment, say what's needed. If we need to dart the animal and capture it more often than not the volunteers will be involved.
Q: Have you been teaching the volunteers some things about the tracking?
Absolutely, because, if you think about it the the tracking skills have disappeared in the last decade and to have that skill and to also have that knowledge and to be able to pass on to other people is an amazing thing.
Q: Would you recommend this project to other volunteers?
One hundred percent. It’s not about a touchy-feely program it's actually about contributing. It's about understanding what conservation is.