Tag: conservation holiday with cheetahs

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Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia).

Tuesday we spent the morning setting up a new box trap. The whole team participated in the event – even Martina (pictured) our strict vegetarian who jumped right in and brought the bait meat. Vera was quite happy to get this box trap installed and activated because before the Biosphere team arrived it was too far for one person to drive each day to check the trap. A group split off with Vera in the afternoon and activated two more traps that were already set up.

Namibia martina with the meat

Wednesday the teams spent learning telemetry to track the elephant herd, re-activating the fourth box trap, building a hide at one of the water holes, and walking in the bush looking for tracks and scats. As all three activity groups left base camp in convoy in the afternoon, we happened upon a rhino group who were polite enough to yield the roadway to us. They could not quite make out what three vehicles were doing on their turf, and resorted to a defensive posture, back-end together. We left them to carry on doing their rhino thing.

Namibia defensive rhino

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Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia).

Kathy, Vera and I finished our preparations for this year’s expedition and base camp has come alive with the arrival of Team 1, and now it feels like home. Yesterday was full of introductions and briefings on the farm, our work here, and an introduction to life in Namibia. Afterwards we watched the sunset from the lapa and practiced our species identification as various groups of animals came to the water hole at desk.

Vera clearly enjoyed introducing us to the telemetry antenna and Kathy branding up the brand new Landcruisers as they arrived with a day or so to spare 😉

Thanks to Martin and Jane, our new camera traps have also arrived and Vera will brief us on how to use them later today.

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Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia).

Alisa, your expedition leader, here and I am writing to you from the ground in Namibia.

Kathy and I arrived yesterday and have joined Vera at base camp in Okambara. Last night we were treated to several wildebeests drinking from the water hole outside the lapa and later a jackal. This morning the giraffes joined us for our morning tea, all while we were busy preparing base camp for the expeditions and looking forward to your arrival.

A reminder that our meeting point is Casa Piccolo in Windhoek at 8:30. Team 1 will need to be there on Sunday, 4 August. Please arrive on time, and Casa Piccolo requests that you check in with reception when you arrive. What then happens is that Casa Piccolo staff will put you on a transfer bus that we hire from Omahuka Transfers. This bus will take you to our study site, a drive of about 2 hours. Vera, Kathy and I will then meet you in our 4x4s upon your arrival at Okambara’s Josephine Gate.

Best regards

Alisa Clickenger
Expedition Leader

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Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia).

Final preparations (with a look of utter concentration) before we start our four months of big cat & elephant conservation and research.

Final prep

Our next e-mail (with the emergency contact number) will be from Namibia!

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Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia).

Mutiny already and we have not even started! We’ve received replies containing the s/h/v-words in open defiance of the ban. Smartphones will doubtless have to be confiscated. Do you know why they are called smartphones by the way? Well before the NSA (hello, by the way – we hope you are also enjoying reading this), there was a secret agency based somewhere in Washington with a secret agent called Smart who had a portable phone way before anyone else had….

And while you ponder this, we leave you with some girl power pictures so that you all know who to hand your phones into…

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Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia).

Not long to go now. With Vera already in Namibia, Kathy will join her from the UK via Germany next week and Alisa will from the US, also via Germany. Girl power indeed.

Meanwhile a male particpant is clearly struggling with the Buff that you will all receive when you get there (he won his in a competition).

john

And usually it’s only male cheetahs that get caught in a box trap repeatedly. Females, once trapped once, will by and large never be caught out again. Draw your own conclusions 😉

The weather in central Namibia is sunny with temperatures during the day in the twenties (Centigrade) and dropping to single figures at night. Getting up in the morning will feel decidedly cold – there is no culture of heating in Namibia anywhere, so bring warm clothes group 1. The good news is that as soon as the sun comes up over the horizon, you will quickly be able to shed those layers.

The girl power team will be in touch from Namibia once they have settled in and awoken the expedition gear from its Sleeping Beauty lull in a shed near the expedition base.

Sleeping Beauty storage

Alisa will send her mobile number for emergencies a few days before we start and update us all on final preparations.

We hope yours are going well too. We have attached the plan so far as well as some datasheets for you to swot up on – and dispel any last myths there may persist of anyone joining some kind of safari holiday 😉

Two weeks to go for trailblazing group 1…

P.S. In case you were wondering what the heck a Buff is, have a look at

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Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia).

Here’s a short video update from the field from our scientist Vera:

The warning about cold nights applies to the first few groups and we’ll keep you updated about exact temperatures closer to the time. Only 5 weeks to go until we start with group 1 on 4 August!

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Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia).

Hello everyone. My name is Vera Menges and I am the brand new Namibia field scientist who will work with lead scientist Joerg Melzheimer and all of you expedition participants on our Namibia expedition – “A game of cats & elephants: safeguarding big cats, elephants and other species of the African savannah, Namibia.”

Vera Menges was born and educated in Germany. After spending a couple of years abroad (UK & New Zealand), she graduated from the Westphalian Wilhelms-University Münster in Germany with a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology and from Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland with a Master’s Degree in Conservation and Management of Protected Areas. The latter was based on brown bear research in Sweden in collaboration with the Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project. Since then, she has worked for the bear project as well as for a lynx/roe deer research project in the Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany. She is putting her skills and her passion for wildlife research and conservation towards pursuing a PhD in carnivore research as well as mitigating human-wildlife conflict by working at the big cat and elephant project in Namibia.
Vera Menges was born and educated in Germany. After spending a couple of years abroad (UK & New Zealand), she graduated from the Westphalian Wilhelms-University Münster in Germany with a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology and from Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland with a Master’s Degree in Conservation and Management of Protected Areas. The latter was based on brown bear research in Sweden in collaboration with the Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project. Since then, she has worked for the bear project as well as for a lynx/roe deer research project in the Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany. She is putting her skills and her passion for wildlife research and conservation towards pursuing a PhD in carnivore research as well as mitigating human-wildlife conflict by working at the big cat and elephant project in Namibia.

I have just hit the ground running in Namibia, arriving a few days ago and learning the ropes with people here on our Okambara study site. My flight with SAA to Windhoek was great, but their broccoli and beans vegetarian meal takes some getting used to. But brocolli and beans was followed by a leopard and two cheetahs within a couple of days. The leopard needed some attention from a vet and my colleagues here captured and collared two cheetahs just in time for my arrival – what a welcome to Africa and incredible piece of luck!

Cheetah in a box trap
Cheetah in a box trap

Anyway, over the next three months, I will be sending you some irregular updates of my work here and the preparations for the expedition, starting in August. Watch this space and the links below.

Best wishes

Vera Menges
Field scientist Namibia

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Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia)

After almost most of the team took half a day off on sick leave, everyone had recovered by Thursday for the last day of activities.

Hendrik, Astrid and Ariane went out to check the newly set box traps and became the luckiest team members this year when three cheetahs appeared on the road in front of them. Two cubs with their mother, so we think that these were the ones from the picture we discovered three days ago.

When Hendrik, Astrid and Ariane arrived at box trap number 4, they found the gates down and were very excited when Jesaja told them to come close and have a look inside. A tortoise had been captured 😉

Our last full day of the expedition finished with an inventory and packing up before we all went out for our last 2012 expedition sundowner.

Kristina, Joerg and I, and everyone else involved in the expedition this year, would like to thank everyone who joined in and helped us this year. Even though the leopards eluded us on the later slots, we have achieved much and we could not have done so without your help. Kristina and I will stay on for a few more weeks to pack up and try to catch another leopard. The full results of the expedition will be written up by Kristina in the expedition report, which should be with you within the next 6-8 months.

For now we have put a selection of pictures below.

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Please do stay in touch and thank you very much again for your help. You could have chosen to spend it on a beach somewhere, but instead you came to help Kristina and Joerg with their work out here, and we all really appreciate this.

Best wishes to everyone and we hope to see you again on an expedition, some time, some place.

The Biosphere Expeditions team

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Update from our working holiday volunteering with leopards, elephants and cheetahs in Namibia, Africa (www.biosphere-expeditions.org/namibia)

We spent the last couple of days moving two box traps and then removing lots of thorns from ourselves. The traps are now set up where we spotted the big leopard on the camera trap pictures.

On Saturday we celebrated Gigi’s birthday with a cake in the morning. In the afternoon it was the job of Hendrik, Astrid and Ariane to browse through the camera trap pictures and we were all very excited when they found cheetah cubs with their mother, taken by on of the traps set up in the north east of our study site (see sites below for the picture).

This morning Christian had his first experience of a baboon grabbing his shoes while releasing it from one of our newly set box traps. No leopard so far…

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