Award-winning, non-profit & ethical wildlife conservation volunteering. Advancing citizen science & conservation since 1999
Update from our leopard conservation Malawi expedition
We placed and are monitoring 21 cameras in positions across the reserve. We have 14 at sites we utilise every year and a further 7 that we move around dependent on sightings or signs of specific animals.
Continue reading “Leopard conservation Malawi 2026: Aardvark to vervet”Update from our elephant conservation Malawi expedition
We are now in the groove of field work and data collection, much helped by the generous actions of the Vwaza wildlife.
Continue reading “Elephant conservation Malawi 2026: Big beasts”Update from our lion conservation Malawi expedition
We have been busy. Bird transects, elephant counts, hippo transects, elephant dung analysis and camera trapping.
We start early with dawn drives or the bird transects. 05:00 up and out. Back for one of Luka’s amazing breakfasts (pancakes are popular) and then out again. Either on foot for the Hippo transects or into the vehicles for elephant counts. The elephants paid a 03:00 visit to camp this morning too.
Continue reading “Lion conservation Malawi 2026: Lights, camera, action!”Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, lion and African biodiversity
The expedition team reached base on Saturday after a 450 km bus journey and a mishap 1.5 km from base. The bus git stuck, but no problem – we dispatched a vehicle recovery team and got to practice our skills.
Continue reading “Wildlife conservation Malawi 2026: Underway”Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, lion and African biodiversity
Us staffers (see picture) got together in Lilongwe to load up supplies for a month and trying to leave enough room for the five of us! All went well until four hours into the journey to Vwaza master chef Luka announced that we needed another half-tonne of fresh veg….
Continue reading “Malawi African biodiversity study 2026: At base”Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, lion and African biodiversity
Welcome to the 2026 Malawi diary. My name is Simon and I will be your expedition leader on this African biodiversity expedition to Malawi studying elephants, lions, hippos and other species.
I arrived on Sunday and met with our in-country partners, the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust (LWT). On Tuesday we all head to our camp in Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve to get everything ready for the arrival of African biodiversity survey team 1 on Saturday. I hope your preparations are going well and you are excited about the expedition.
Continue reading “Malawi African biodiversity study 2026: Getting ready”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.
Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, cats, pangolins and African biodiversity
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.
Continue reading “Malawi: Leopard and more”Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, cats, pangolins and African biodiversity
This is an update from our Malawi volunteer expedition. You can find an overview of all our current expeditions here.
Update from our Malawi expedition volunteering with elephants, hippo, cats, pangolins and African biodiversity
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 😉
