Wildlife Experience in Kruger National Park South Africa - 12+ Projects!
- South Africa
- Hoedspruit
About Program
4-week wildlife placement working on conservation projects in the greater Kruger National Park. If you want to volunteer and make a real difference to Africa’s wildlife, gain new ecology and conservation skills, or just enjoy an unforgettable gap year adventure, this is the perfect travel experience for you!
Work as a team of fellow volunteers and students from all over the world and help protect African wildlife.
When not taking part in planned conservation work, you'll be able to explore the surrounding area that makes up blyde river canyon, the worlds largest green canyon!
Video and Photos
Program Highlights
- Get to the frontline of conservation – As a volunteer and or gap year traveller, you’ll play a crucial role with over 12 incredible and important conservation projects. And if you’ve got your own ideas or ambitions we can help implement them!
- Get adventurous – During your travels, you’ll stay in new places and locations. Witness the breath-taking beauty of South Africa and its natural wonders. Plus exciting activities like mountain hikes, microlight flights and white water tubing.
- Get helping the experts – Help vets with emergency call outs responding to injured animals, work at wildlife rehabilitation centres with orphaned animals, nursing, feeding, health checking and handling them.
- Get involved – Work with rural communities; Improve and uplift, helping break the poverty cycle and creating more sustainable livelihoods and futures. Work with local groups to protect wildlife.
- Get up close and personal – A life changing experience awaits. Meet Africa’s iconic and enigmatic wildlife via safari viewer and on foot as you explore the reserve you’ll be based on and the world renowned Kruger National park.
Program Impact
Through our wildlife volunteer placements, Hamba Africa’s goal is to actively protect and safeguard nature for future generations whilst inspiring our adventurers in the process.
The diversity and number of projects mean we can protect and have a huge impact on today’s environments. But through our ongoing research and data capture, our projects also help us better understand how tomorrow’s ecosystems will flourish.
We also work with various local groups, rehabilitation centers, endangered breeding centers, charities, and environmental experts, helping their projects and ensuring that conservation is a thriving industry. It’s vital to support and encourage local communities to take ownership of their natural habitat, and to become its guardians for their own long term security and success.
Our goal is also to invest in YOU!
As you work on your projects, you'll learn all aspects of ecology and conservation development, how projects are designed and implemented and if you've got your own ideas, your guides can help you to develop these.
We hope you will leave inspired and with new transferable skills to take away with you and apply in your academic studies or as a stepping stone into a career in conservation.
Popular Programs
Our flagship wildlife research project has been designed to monitor the movements and social behavior of white rhinos around the reserve, gaining new data on these animals for better conservation management and developing new camera trap surveying techniques.
You'll play a crucial role in installing camera traps at sites of social and behavioral importance to rhino, tracking and monitoring on foot and from a vehicle. Helping give new data with how rhinos live and thrive on the reserve.
Team up with local wildlife centers and help handle and give presentations with wildlife ambassadors to local communities. A great way to give yourself a bit of experience with directly working with animals and perhaps fostering that inner wildlife documentarian but also great fun meeting the animals and enthusiastic locals who want to learn about their natural heritage.
A great project focused on preventing human-wildlife conflict and creating the next generation of wildlife warriors!
Getting continuous data on the populations of wildlife big and small is essential to monitor an ecosystem's health.
During this project, you'll be monitoring the smaller animals that call the African savannas home. You'll set catch and release traps at various locations, then after a day re-retrieve them, gently handling the occupants as you record data such as species, weight, age, and health before releasing them back into the wild!
Working with vets and rehabilitation centres, you'll take part in a variety of activities which are never predictable but always exciting. This could mean helping bottle feed and provide behavioural enrichment to young and orphaned animals. Or respond to emergency call-outs to injured animals. Even health checking and feeding animals.
You'll also get a behind the scene look at a rehabilitation centre, learning and getting some hands-on experience with the running and how they operate.
Snaring is the most common form of poaching and devastates not just animals targeted for bush meat like antelopes but also through by catch as animals like lions, wild dogs or hyena move through the reserve or attempt to scavenge from caught animals inadvertently getting caught themselves.
You'll work with the anti-poaching team to patrol the reserve on foot and look for and remove snares placed by poachers as well as other signs of poaching activity such as breaks in fences or tracks.
Related Programs
Questions & Answers
Staff Interviews
These are in-depth Q&A sessions with program leaders.
Location
Hoedspruit is in the Limpopo province in Big 5 country, which refers to the Game Lodges and Private Nature Reserves. This town is agriculturally oriented and the majority of activities involve wildlife, environment, and people.
