Research Overview

As a volunteer you have the opportunity to work with the researcher and will assist with all of the research and monitoring which takes place on the reserve.

Both the vegetation and the animal components of the reserve need to be managed. One of the biggest challenges that we face today is the decrease of large tracts of land required by both the indigenous plants and wild animals of our country. This puts us in the unfortunate position where many systems must be managed and manipulated by humans. In order to do this we need intimate knowledge of how all the ecosystems function. This is where the importance of research and monitoring become apparent. At any given time there are a number of projects on the go and you will be the ones collecting the data that could one day be processed into a groundbreaking new approach or discovery. This is why it is so important that all data recorded is accurate as this could form the basis of a future management model.

At Pidwa our ideal is to mimic the natural system as much as possible. As the old saying goes “why reinvent the wheel?”. The natural processes have been hampered by human interference and this requires us to step in and “assist”. Assist is, however, the keyword and this is of course very different to total control. What we are trying to do is maintain the balance that would be present in a perfect situation where there was no interference or fences. The emphasis is on the system as a whole and the influence of the animals on the environment (and vise versa) must be established.

There are both short term projects and long term (or on-going) projects that take place on the reserve. Below are some examples of the type of projects that you could expect to be involved in:

1. Sex / age ratio analysis: animal species will be monitored to establish optimal ratio to increase productivity. In conjunction with annual game counts, a more accurate idea of species population sizes, composition and sex/age ratios will be determined.
2. Large animal demography: volunteers collect data in the field and assist in the maintenance and upkeep of reserve records and the maintenance of identification kits.
3. Vegetation surveys – mapping of homogeneous units, monitoring the herbaceous and woody components etc. Many of these activities are seasonal such as veld condition assessments (VCA's) and the volunteers on the reserve over this period would assist during these times
4. Elephant - vegetation impact study
5. Ecological Base line surveys: students will contribute to the collection of data needed to compile a resource inventory
6. Predator / prey dynamics: prey selection, frequency of kills etc. will be monitored as predation influences the herbivore component directly which in turn affects the vegetation of the reserve. Being a stocked reserve there are also financial implications related to predation
7. Cheetah research: Assist with our wild cheetah relocation programme, ensuring the survival of these magnificent cats
8. Rare species breeding projects: assist with the current breeding projects of special species such a sable, nyala and reedbuck (feeding, maintenance and monitoring).
9. Nocturnal mammal focus: The monitoring of these species occurs during nocturnal drives, whereby volunteers participate to acquire data on the ranging, foraging and reproductive behaviour of nocturnal species
10. Assisting with game counts when needed