Wildlife Research Unit - a lifestyle

Imagine a typical day in the life of a Wildlife Research Intern at Ocean’s Campus...

Before 8:30am, you have already scarfed down breakfast and are finishing off the last bit of toast in the passenger seat bound for Gondwana Nature Reserve. Reference book in hand, you spot Orange-breasted Sunbirds and yellow Cape Sugarbrids in the entrance to the 14,000 hectacre park. Cheetahs are the target animal for the morning however. You assist expert ranger Jo Fourie in triangulating the exact location of two collared bachelors not far from the visitors’ lodge. This requires tracking by foot and wheel as you make your way through savanna grasslands and up fynbos knolls. Inspect some scat, study a faint print in the track (rhino, you deduce), scout the raptors trolling the plains, then makeshift a pond-side camp for a lunch of your own. The afternoon consists of another game drive, this time to record the behaviors of giraffes within a predator reserve. Rays of sunshine filter through the window; you can feel them bathing down your neck and arms as you follow the patterned long necks with your binoculars. On the short ride back to campus, you chat with Jo about the day’s data, but also about the wonders of ecology, the folktales of animal behavior, and the finer details of life. Another day, another adventure. One thing is certain: Tomorrow will be entirely different.

The Wildlife Research program debuted in May, 2014 as an addition to the suite of eight other educational internships offered by Oceans Campus, in Mosssel Bay, South Africa. It sets itself apart as the only program dedicated solely to developing the skills necessary for running a terrestrial research project. Interns learn various scientific methods for compiling and analyzing professional level research on wildlife species. Projects may involve birds, insects, small animals, and/or large animals like caracals, rhinos, and elephants.

Two years in the making, the program kicked off this month with a bang. First-time intern, Alex Raposo, spent a full week camping in the African bush with senior instructor Arno Smit. There, she learned the technical as well as survival skills that would help her understand the bio-diverse environment on a profound level. When she wasn’t around the fire or procuring dinner, she was tracking animals, learning to identify their footprints by size, shape, and impact. She also studied various scat samples, practiced how to best approach animals, and even got a tutorial on how to properly defend herself in an adverse wildlife encounter.

“I recommend it to anyone who plans to spend a significant time in the bush,” said Alex. “And it was just fun too.”

One highlight for Alex was witnessing the release of a male rhino into the park. It was the second day of her program. Alex watched from a safe distance as rangers assisted the large bull into its new home. The excitement was high for the rhino reintroduction, but also cautious, for rhinos are a controversial issue in South Africa due to rampant poaching. Alex was happy to report that the male rhino had been spotted mating with a young female less than a week into his transition. Perhaps this means the 2015 interns will even get to glimpse a rhino calf.

No day is quite the same for Alex, but each day builds on the last. She has become an expert for example, in the telemetry used to map the approximate locations of collared animals, especially cheetah and rhino. She has also assisted the senior instructors in collecting data for a project on giraffe behaviors. The hypothesis revolves around whether the giraffes in Gondwana, where predatory lions share the same park, act differently than giraffes in predator free parks. Other projects include trapping small mammals to study genetic diversity and survival rates, camera trapping for nocturnal activity, and crunching bird data to research whether or not there exists a difference in diversity between nature reserves and local farms.

By the end of her time in Gondwana, Alex will have composed a research proposal of her own design. She plans to return to the University of Toronto where she will be a senior this year in order to complete her degree in Biodiversity and Conservation Biology.

Meanwhile, Arno and Jo will be busy going “bush” with a host of new Wildlife Research interns over the next couple month (three for June and six for July). They will continue research started with Alex and begin new projects as they arise. With the start of winter bloom budding the beauty of fuzzy Pretoria and lavender hued Ericas across the Western Cape, it is a promising time for Wildlife Research interns wanting to do some blossoming of their own through a bit of adventure, a lot of learning, and more than touch of fun. 

Jordie Ricigliano

Wildlife Research Unit kicks off

Oceans Research has evolved and crawled out on land, and so we have started with land based research with one intern and five projects. The studies were conducted on two private game reserves in close proximity to Mossel bay. The small mammal survey and bird surveys were done at Botlierskop for safety reasons, as the Lion on the reserve is kept in an enclosure and not free roaming as is the case on Gondwana Game Reserve.

 The month kicked off the first week of Training. Camping at a water hole overlooking the rolling hills covered in indigenous fynbos must have been an experience for anybody with a love for nature. The campers were reminded of the force of nature when a huge wind storm blew the tents down on late Sunday afternoon and were they forced to seek shelter from the elements. Replacing all damaged equipment on Monday morning, they returned to the field to resume their field work.

We started our research work at Botlierskop on Monday morning with our new set of 4x4 wheels called “THE AARDWOLF”. Two small mammal trapping grids were laid out with 25 traps each.  We focussed our efforts in two habitat types, fynbos and grassland.

After finishing our packed lunches, we set out to look for suitable places to deploy the two camera traps. Both were eventually deployed in two separate river beds where we expected game movement.

For the next three days we checked the traps every morning, for small mammals and after the first two escaped we had our skills honed and marked and weighed a total of 19 mice. We took 17 tail clippings for DNA analyses.

The afternoons were spent doing the behaviour study on the Giraffe and some interesting interactions were seen as one female is expected to be pregnant and the other female being in oestrus.

Week three was focussed the behaviour study and bird surveys and tracking at Botlierskop and Gondwana.  

The last week were put aside for tracking and the giraffe behaviour study. We tried to find the cheetah, but could not get to see them but got a good fix on their general position. We focussed on the behavioural study on Tuesday and Wednesday being our last day at Gondwana we tracked the Rhino and were hoping to see the elephant as both these pachyderms were not seen by us.  After finding them we spent the afternoon following their movements in the valley until they moved into the thicket and could not be seen anymore.

On Thursday morning we went out to Botlierskop to retrieve the camera traps and the afternoon was put aside for downloading and analysing the images. We were quite disappointed about the results, as we only recorded a waterbuck and eland on the one trap, and a giraffe on the other. I am planning to place the traps on existing game paths where there are good visibility for the next session. But that is what research is all about: not always a success. To be continued...