WILDLIFE MONITORING PLACEMENTS: WHAT TO EXPECT
We are offering exciting new placements that support our biodiversity monitoring work in partnership with African Parks. Our monitoring in Liwonde NP focuses primarily on species of special concern, including elephants, lions, cheetahs, hyenas, leopards, vultures, lovebirds and parrots. Information collected is used to inform the park’s adaptive population management strategies – which means that people who sign up for a placement will make a direct difference to the protection and conservation of Malawi’s wildlife.
Field work is intensive and requires early starts, long days and plenty of patience! Activities include radio tracking of targeted animals, checking camera traps and recording opportunistic sightings. Working as part of a small team, you’ll learn how to conduct VHF radio tracking, animal identification, camera trapping and data entry. You’ll also experience some truly unique moments as you learn more about the dynamics of groups and individual wild animals during your placement. This may include moments such as witnessing the take-over of a pride by a new male, watching a female cheetah teaching her cubs how to hunt or observing the dynamics between vultures and mammalian predators at a carcass.
Our field work generally runs for five and a half days a week. Participants will occasionally have down time between morning and afternoon monitoring sessions, although our work is unpredictable and may result in full days in the field. In the evenings, however, there will be a chance to sit around the fire, listen to the sounds of the bush and chat about the day’s events.