Malawi: Expedition achievements

Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, cats, pangolins and African biodiversity

The 2025 Malawi Expedition has now finished and I am happy to reflect on another successful expedition, with a great group of expeditioners, some memorable highlights and a lot of good research data collected.

This is an expedition with multiple research projects: elephant herd observations, hippo transects, elephant dung analysis, camera trap survey, night transects, bird transects and an iNaturalist project, which gives a record of all interesting species spotted opportunistically.

We have done well on all of these and uploaded a large set of data for the expedition scientist to analyse and write up.

A provisional summary of some of what the 2025 expedition has achieved:

• 45 sightings of elephant herds, totalling 396 elephants counted
• 6 complete hippo transects
• 4 bird transects completed with 84 bird sightings (42 separate species)
• 5 night transects completed with 15 separate species identified
• 31 elephant dung samples collected (and samples put aside for DNA analysis) and 221 seeds extracted for later identification
• 1000’s of camera trap images analysed with evidence of notable species including serval, leopard, spotted hyaena, honey badger and bushpig
• 109 species recorded on iNaturalist including lion (evidenced by a clear footprint by the lakeshore), roan antelope (rarely seen in our study area), brown greater galago (bushbaby) and a great variety of birds, insects and plants.

Well done Team Vwaza!

The team worked hard, had fun and achieved so much: thank you to all of you!

And thanks too to my excellent team of Biosphere Expeditions and LWT staff, who ran the expedition so well, always adapting to the challenges of each day with resourcefulness and a positive attitude. This is what makes for a successful expedition.

The expedition continued in good spirit right to the end. We spent our last day finalising data entry, packing up and enjoying a celebratory final evening with a beautiful sunset and a starry sky above our campfire.

And after we had gone to bed, loud trumpeting woke us up – one of the Vwaza elephants bidding us farewell at 03:00 and giving us a lasting memory of the 2025expedition.

Farewell

Roland Arnison, expedition leader

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Some feedback from our volunteers:

“I’m so grateful for all the intelligent chat with my fellow citizen scientists… Elephants in camp and up at dawn to look at birds were the best”.

“And the citizen science stars – so much laughter and serious discussion. I will miss the camaraderie.”

“Under the clear unpolluted sky, the Milky Way set the scene – a stunning sight so different from what we are used to.”

“What made it even more special was the enthusiastic group of fellow expeditioners. Thank you for your shared passion,”

“Location was wonderful with animals passing by. Building the bird list with Gideon was wonderful too.”

“Roland and Simon are excellent people to lead diverse groups. They made me feel safe in an environment I’m not used to.”

Some video feedback:

This is an update from our Malawi volunteer expedition which includes volunteering with elephants and hippos. Join us on one of our upcoming expeditions!