Black Rhino and Elephant Conservation in Zimbabwe

My time at Imire was during the summer holidays and therefore the schools were shut. This meant that we didn’t go over to the school, which was a shame. But it was great meeting the staff’s families when doing different activities.

During my stay, we painted all the houses where the elephant and rhino handlers lived. This gave us time to interact with the families by playing games and speaking to all the kids. Some even helped paint the houses…and us!!

I can’t single out one person!! The elephant handlers Nkosi, Blessing, and Marapyia (sorry, not too sure on the spelling) were amazing!!

Their knowledge, love for their job, and willingness to teach was a huge highlight. Even on our days off (weekends), a few of the other volunteers and I asked to spend the day with the elephants.

Nothing was too much trouble for them and they were happy to have us along with them. The way they spoke about the elephants were as if they were their children.

The three guys made my experience so much better!! They still keep in touch on the internet and keep me updated with elephant news…and of course their football team news.

I had previously visited Zimbabwe so I roughly knew what to expect. The only thing I wish I knew was how good the project would be so I could of planned to stay longer!!

I wouldn’t say it has changed my view as such.

It opened my eyes to the other side of poaching and although us as volunteers look at the rhino handlers and wish for jobs like that…’walking around watching the rhinos’.

The bigger picture tells a whole different story. The reasons why they are following the rhinos and the fact that they are armed brings it home. It’s a real threat and everyone seems very aware.

There has been a huge increase in trying to make people aware of how bad poaching has become and I only hope that it starts to make a difference.

I can’t imagine my children in years to come looking through my photos and not knowing what a rhino is!!! I can't bare the thought of that!!

We believe Imire is unique firstly because of how it was founded - on solid conservation grounds and sustainable farming principles. We’ve acheived many firsts at Imire - habituating orphaned African elephants, becoming a breeding nucleus for foot-and-mouth free buffalo as well as nyala and the rare sable antelope. We have a proven and successful track record of breeding black rhino for release back into safe areas of Zimbabwe and our vision is to continue to promote the benefits of wildlife and human co-habitation in the rural areas.

Our volunteer programme is hands on, and we mean properly hands on - where else can you study the endangered black rhino so close at hand, have such amazing experiences with elephants and form relationships with many other animals? Because we only take a maximum of 10 people at a time, our volunteers are always active, always involved and become one of the family - Imire is still family owned, with three generations of the Travers family living on the game park and we believe this creates a special atmosphere which is hard to find in larger, more commercial programmes.

Patience, enthusiasm and flexibility are all key to a good volunteer, especially in Africa! Our volunteers will turn their hands to anything - whether its mucking out the rhino beds, helping vets with injections, carrying out snare sweeps or searching for white rhino’s on horseback - be prepared for anything!

Every project we undertake has specific and measurable objectives which are regularly measured by a range of Imire staff, managers, community members and volunteers. All volunteers give us feedback in the middle and end of their programmes and if necessary we will adapt the direction of projects and volunteer involvement.

Each community project is undertaken with the full support of the village heads, local council, schools and other relevant parties and we go through a full consultation to ensure that all parties buy into what we are trying to achieve. Our community projects are about empowerment not charity and we find that within the community there are enthusiastic people who will do their best to make each project a success.