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.
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.
The advanced party has arrived in Malawi ahead of the start of the expedition, to help with last preparations, alongside expedition leader Roland, there is Simon, expedition leader in training. On the LWT side, there are expedition scientist Lea and helpers Chim and Gideon.
Roland, Gideon, Lea, Chim, Simon
Lilongwe is hot, dusty and busy, but not TOO hot dusty and busy! It’s fine walking around here in a T-shirt and thin trousers in the middle of the day. The Malawian government has been doing major road upgrades over the last few years and it’s now mostly complete in Lilongwe – it’s almost fun to drive on the wide new tarmacced roads now. The taxi drivers we spoke to were very happy!
We have tied up a few remaining loose ends on the expedition prep and have just set off to Vwaza with all the kit and supplies we need to set everything up for the expedition there. It will be a long day, but it will end with arrival at our wonderful base camp, with baboons, hippos, antelope and elephants waiting for us. More from there in a day or two.
It’s not long to go until the start of the 2025 Malawi expedition. We are feeling prepared and excited. We have updated the research tasks – continuing the long-term studies of elephants and hippos at Vwaza along with the camera trap surveys, while also adding some new nocturnal mammal and bird research. All the activities we intend to do are in the 2025 Malawi Field Guide. Please can you make sure you download and study this prior to the expedition, and bring a copy of it with you, either as a soft copy on a tablet or a printed version. We are counting on a hard-working team to undertake all of the activities, following training at the start of the expedition, so the more you can swot up now, the easier it will be for you to get through the intensive training phase.
We have sourced some new equipment too, to aid this research – thank you to those of you who have volunteered to bring some of this kit with you. Our expedition partners, Lilongwe Wildlife Trust, have also been busy preparing: getting the camp and vehicles ready and sourcing the expedition food – not always easy in a country like Malawi where you can’t guarantee the availability of all the food supplies you might want! But I am confident that we will have the tasty and nutritious meals that we have enjoyed in previous years, prepared by our experienced expedition cook.
This will be my fourth time leading this expedition and I expect it to run as smoothly as in previous years – although something unexpected always seems to happen, usually involving elephants!
I will be flying out from the UK soon to work with LWT in final preparations and head up to Vwaza before the full expedition team arrive.
I will report back once I have arrived in Lilongwe and leave you with the 2024 picture selection to put you in the mood..
Biosphere Expeditions has continued its long-term partnership with Lilongwe Wildlife Trust, researching and monitoring wildlife populations in Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve.
The Malawi expedition has a particular focus on surveying elephants and hippos, as well as camera trap surveys of other wild animals. Analysis of elephant dung was also carried out to assess whether elephants had been eating crops grown in fields outside the reserve. The 2024 expedition also continued the process started in the earlier expeditions of identifying individual matriarch and adult bull elephants. Building this database of individual elephants will help greatly in mapping the demographics, movements and health of the elephant herds in Vwaza.
The 2024 expedition counted 296 elephants over 34 sightings, 339 hippos over five complete lake-side transects and collected and analysed 24 elephant dung samples (yielding 1743 seeds). The expedition also identified or created 17 ID profiles of elephants, with at least one re-sighting. Seventeen camera traps throughout the expedition provided evidence of hyaena, civet, genet, two species of mongoose and honey badger, amongst other species.
Expedition Leader Roland Arnison, who also led the 2022 and 2023 expeditions in Vwaza, said that “this was another successful expedition, carrying out field research tasks that, practically, can only be carried out by a team of hard-working citizen scientists. I am confident that the results gathered from this expedition will make an important contribution to the conservation of endangered species and biodiversity in Vwaza”.
Head of Research at LWT, Dr Leandra Stracquadanio, who was the expedition scientist, said “the data that we collected during this expedition is invaluable for us to continue our monitoring of elephant and hippo populations, as well as the overall biodiversity within Vwaza. The team did an excellent job and produced high-quality data that will inform ongoing and future conservation planning.”
Citizen scientists feedback:
Roland and Lea and the team really made this entire experience incredible. Kathy H., USA
It’s a great experience and I really felt us being here was useful. Sanne W., Netherlands
Really enjoyed that each day had a different combination of activities. Really positive leadership by Roland and Lea. Pam G., UK
The expedition was well set up and organised and there was not a day that I felt like something was out of place. Glory M., Malawi
This is my fourth expedition to Vwaza Marsh with Biosphere Expeditions. Another wonderful experience, finished off with a very special visit from the elephants and their babies coming right past our campfire as we were having dinner on our last night. Janet B., UK
The 2024 Malawi expedition has now finished and it ended in style. With our last research tasks complete, all the data entered and kit packed up, we enjoyed a well deserved sundowner on our last evening on the shores of the lake, watching the glorious red sunset. Back to camp for a farewell feast prepared by the expedition cook, Luca, which was interrupted by a startling loud noise coming from the dark very close to us. Elephants! A herd had quietly crept in and was calmly feeding on the trees only 10 meters away. We unpacked a red spotlight and watched with fascination and joy as the elephants spent the next hour or so wandering around the edges of our camp, utterly unfazed by us watching safely from our communal area. It was a magnificent and pretty emotional ending for the expedition.
Some headline achievements of the expedition are shown below.
Many of our elephant sightings have been from base camp. Some of the herds seem to have a tendency to wander down to ‘our’ end of the lake and the good grazing on the land opposite camp in the late afternoon. We often get only a few minutes to enjoy watching them wade through the shallows, drinking and bathing, then up onto the shore before they reach the tall vegetation where they are half hidden. In those precious minutes we need to count and do our best to characterise them by sex and age class. Using binoculars and cameras, we also look for any distinctive identification features such as notches on ears and tusk shape. In this way we can cross-reference with the Vwaza elephant catalogue created from our previous expeditions here and potentially add to the catalogue too.
We also collected all the camera traps and processed all the images. As expected, we have images of hippos and elephants (mostly just their legs, close up) as well as the antelope species we meet every day in the day time. But we also have evidence of quite a few nocturnal species: civets, genets, mongooses as well as a porcupine and a honey badger. All of these are significant, but none quite as exciting as the hyaenas we captured earlier on.
It has been a good expedition, and both myself and expedition scientist Lea are pleased with the quality and amount of data that the team has gathered. I would like to thank our all our citizen scientists who have contributed so much to this expedition and continued our mission of building up a good long-term research dataset on the wildlife at Vwaza, which will be shared with the reserve managers and others and published as necessary. Thank you!
We deploy camera traps to monitor which species live in Vwaza – especially nocturnal animals, which we would not otherwise spot. Some of these animals are caught on our cameras every year, but no less exciting to find anyway – civets, mongooses, genets and of course elephants and hippos (both wander the woods at night, feeding). But occasionally we capture an image of a rarer species. Two years ago we found the first ever evidence of wild dogs in Vwaza in this way. This year when we checked a camera we had set up facing an animal carcass, which we noticed had been dragged away, we found the culprit on camera: a hyaena! Interestingly, the images showed the animal investigating the camera rather than scavenging the carcass: hyaenas are known to show much interest in camera traps and sometimes even pull them off their tree and chew them to destruction. Although we have had evidence of hyaenas at Vwaza before (we spotted some footprints in the sand nearby at the start of the expedition), this is still a notable discovery.
We continue to see elephants daily, although there does seem to be a pattern of ‘good ele days’ alternating with ‘bad ele days’.
Our rest day involved a trip to the market town of Rumphi and a cultural visit to the local elementary school. We had prepared a very simple presentation for the children, which was translated by the teacher, telling them what we are doing here and hopefully inspiring them about wild animals. They in turn sang some songs for us. It was good to make a connection with local people like this.
We only have a couple more full days to go on this year’s expedition, but the team are working well and we are getting a lot of good data in. And tonight we will retrieve the remaining camera traps: who knows what animals we will find on those SD cards!
