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Expedition scientist Simon and I have arrived on our liveaboard base in the Maldives and are setting up as we speak.
The liveaboard harbour is – against expectations – still here and has not been filled in for housing. We have a quiet corner amongst other liveaboards although there is some hammering and shouting going on as I type this as last minute repairs are done.
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:
Vwaza continues to deliver amazing flora and fauna, with some great results on our second round of camera trap checks.
We have now finished collecting data and we are working through the collation of our bird and hippo transects, elephant spotting, elephant ID and dung analysis.
This year we have updated a number of our elephant profiles and added a few new ones.
Camera traps are a vital tool in our data collection efforts. Vwaza has many species that we see during the day and we can record from our own visual observations. But at night the forest and lakeside are teeming with life that we would not necessarily pick up.Â
The expedition team set up 25 camera traps and serviced them halfway through the expedition. Some were unsuccessful – a stray branch can trigger the motion sensor and we had one knocked off by a passing elephant. The others provided some exciting photos of porcupine, cape hare, civet and serval appear. No big cats yet.
We’ve been here in Vwaza for 10 days and on our travels we’ve observed buffalo tracks on a daily basis, but not seen one. Until yesterday when we had two teams out servicing our camera traps (more on those once we’ve processed the photos). Both encountered buffalo, with one team estimating the herd size at over 160. A great find.
Vwaza also has a number of antelope species, the most common being impala and kudu. There are also spotted bush bucks and puku. This morning we added roan to our list, a rare and exciting addition.
Our hippo transects continue to provide large amounts of sightings, with yesterday’s count exceeding 100 animals. We haven’t seen our elephant herd today, but we are working hard on updating our elephant identification sheets.
On Saturday – our day off – we went to the local town and were invited to Kizuni Primary School, where gifts from our expeditioners went down a treat, especially footballs brought by Louise sponsored by her local Canadian soccer team. We declined the offer of a game 😉
Our expedition continues to exceed expectations. We are into our daily citizen science programme. Early morning data recording drives and bird transects, followed by hippo transects and elephant surveys before lunch. The afternoons are then spent sorting and collating data and, the suprisingly popular task of sifting through elephant dung for seed analysis. In the evening we run night transects and share stories of the day.
Highlights from the last couple of days include spectacular bird shots, numerous elephant sightings and finding lion prints (which is exciting as they are rare here). We’ll put up a few extra camera traps and see whether we can catch the track-maker.
Tomorrow’s our rest day and we’re scheduled to visit the nearby school (we always get an invitation). One of our expeditioners has brought lots of footballs, so time for Malawi to win on penalties 😉
Having spotted a herd of 56 elephants mid-afternoon, the herd returned in the evening. This time their chosen route took them straight through our camp. For the next 90 minutes these gentle giants proceeded to eat their way between our tents, causing some damage to the trees, but none to camp itself. Having these animals pass close by us (we were all but one on our communal platform) rightly caused a few nervous moments and lots of excitement, but if you know how to behave around them and just let them get on with their browsing, while we get on with our admiring, then it is and was fine. After they moved on, we swept the camp, collecting some really fresh dung for study.
We’re up and running at Camp Vwaza. The citizen scientist arrived on Saturday evening – 13 people from six different countries and a good mix of science backgrounds, travellers and conservation enthusiasts.
Sunday was our first of two training days. Lea, our resident scientist introduced the team to the expedition’s citizen science tasks and the work of the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust (LWT). We had a presentation from John Stuart of the Malawi Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW), which really helped in understanding where our work fits in with LWT and DNPW goals. In the afternoon we switched to more practical training, introducing the team to our survey equipment. Simon taught the navigation and range-finding skills our expeditioners need to support data collection.
We finished off the day with a short game drive as dusk approached, before Luka, our chef, produced another superb dinner. Topping of the day was a spectacular lunar eclipse. We can’t promise one every year!
Wildlife photo of the day goes to Uwe for his beautiful capture of a martial eagle. Other sightings included warthog, elephants, hippos and various antelope.
Peter Pilbeam from the UK is a long-time supporter of Biosphere Expeditions. He took part in every single expedition to the Altai mountains that Biosphere Expeditions ran from 2003 to 2012. ‘And then it just snowballed’, he remembers. Here’s his story.
‘Initially I was intrigued by the slogan ‘Where on earth is the Altai?’ and my interest in snow leopards’, Peter recalls ,‘and I liked my first expedition so much that I just kept coming back’.
Peter (yellow circle) and his Altai expedition team in 2011.
‘In the years after the Altai expeditions, I went to Kyrgyzstan to continue with snow leopard expeditions, then to Slovakia and Germany to study wolves, Sumatra to work on tigers, and Scotland and the Azores for cetaceans.’ All in all Peter has been on 17 expeditions since Biosphere Expeditions started in 1999, which makes him one of the most experienced expeditioners of the NGO.
‘All these expeditions have taught me how to travel independently, how to camp in the wild, and a good dose of self-reliance’, reflects Peter, ‘and once on the expeditions, I really appreciated all the great and varied experiences, some very hot and humid like Sumatra, some cold and snowy like the Altai and Kyrgyzstan, some wet and with rough seas, such as Scotland and the Azores.’
Altai 2011
Scotland 2013
Slovakia 2017
‘And I always take lots of memories home with me’, says Peter, ‘some of the most abiding ones are trekking over mountains through snow and across scree slopes in the Altai, tracking wolves in snow and mud in Slovakia, and watching and recording whales – those beautiful creatures of the sea – around the Azores archipelago’.
Back home in the UK, Peter has now given lots of talks on snow leopard. He is also active as a mammal surveyor and teaches small mammal ID courses regularly. He has also become a reserve warden in his home-county of Cambridgeshire.
‘I expected to learn something on the expeditions, but I never expected it to have such a profound impact on me!’ says Peter. ‘ To anyone out there thinking about going on an expedition, I would say do it! Choose with care, but just do it!’, he adds with a laugh.
We have made it to Vwaza base camp – a long day’s drive from Lilongwe on roads that alternate between good tarmac and bumpy dirt tracks.
It’s always a pleasure to arrive at base camp and find it in good working condition. There is still much to do to get everything ready for the arrival of the expedition team on Saturday, but the camp infrastructure is in place and working. Luka, our cook, is happy with the kitchen, which is especially important!
We heard hippos and elephants near the camp on our first evening and could make out the shadowy forms of both on the open ground in front of our campfire. The elephants were close enough for us to retreat to the safety of the camp’s communal area and carry on watching them. They seemed at ease with us and eventually wandered off.
The grunts of hippos continued through the night until the birds started calling at dawn: exotic sounds for the European ear. Today we have had good sightings of elephant, baboons and impala opposite base camp, and hippos, kudu, warthogs and many birds as we have explored around the lake side in the 4×4’s.
We have a long list of tasks over the next couple of days – checking kit and protocols, reacquainting ourselves with the wildlife reserve, and generally getting everything ready so we can start the expedition smoothly and efficiently tomorrow.
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