Robert Eklund’s Conservation & Volunteering Page

Sunset over The Pan, just west of the project premises, representing a typical evening view from our chalet (tent).

The N/a’an ku sê Lodge, with the swimming pool and canyon to the right, and the lodges dead center.

The N/a’an ku sê  farm area, with workshops and kitchen.

Volunteer work

Below you find pictures covering volunteer life and activities.

Volunteer chalet (tent) accommodation.

Volunteer kitchen area, including a fantastic rain-and-sunshine combo.

Poo Painting session, i.e. applying a mixture of fermented lion poo on trees and branches to keep leopards and cheetahs away.

Boundary Patrol, including fence mending, and food preparation.

Miriam Oldenburg counting sheep and spending time with the duijker Sylvie.

Miriam Oldenburg with a more or less tame jackal.

Bumping into a giraffe calf out for a stroll by the cheetah enclosures.

Moth on the lodge veranda.

One of the caracals.

A baboon showing impressive teeth.

Robert Eklund giving talk on felid vocalizations in the lecture hall.

Meerkat portrait.

A couple of the pictures of the really perky and ubiquitous meerkats.

A frequent companion by the volunteer swimming pool: the beautiful red-winged drooping.

Rock hyraxes as seen from the lodge.

Rock agamas by the lodge.

An African Wild Cat on the prowl.

San People

During our 2013 stay we made a couple of visits to a San village, and enjoyed both instructions as to how to make traps and stories and singing/dancing by the fire. Unforgettable!

Robert Eklund, Miriam Oldenburg and San People.

Dusk in San village. Stories, singing and dancing.

Desert Express

We took one weekend off to take a fantastic trip from Windhoek to Swakopmund with the “cruise train” Desert Express. The train includes fantastic food, several stops for walks in the sand dunes, game drives, wonderful sun rises and beautiful cabins. Highly recommended! A few pictures are shown below, from the train, the morning walk through the sand dunes south of Swakopmund, and from a sundowner near Stinkbank.

Desert Express Bar and Restaurant. From both one enjoys the wonderful Namibian landscape, replete with wildlife.

Sand dunes morning walk, just south of Swakopmund, as part of the Desert Express experience.

Robert Eklund and Miriam Oldenburg enjoying Namibian sand dunes.

Sand dunes south of Swakopmund.

Miriam Oldenburg enjoying sunrise from train cabin and boarding train at Stinkbank.

Sunset at Stinkbank, between Swakopmund and Windhoek.

1.2 – Antelope Park (2010)

During November and December 2010 me and Miriam Oldenburg were volunteers at the Antelope Park near Gweru, in Zimbabwe. Daily activities included daily lion walks, both morning and evening, when you exercised the lions (up to 18 months old) and also trained them to hunt – a mind-boggling experience! Other activities were enclosure painting, elephant training and herding, cleaning the elephant bomas (enclosures), horse-related activities, including riding, which takes you very close to the wildlife, enclosure painting and mending, boundary patrols, meat preparation and feeding, and... lion cub feeding! Below you find pictures from most of these activities.

Volunteer diploma

At the end of our stay, we upgraded to one of the upscale lodges, and a couple of pictures of these are found below, with lions in the foreground.

View from Island Lodge bridge towards main area, with reception and restaurant.

View from reserve, heading home from evening lion walk.

View of Breeding Program enclosures.

Volunteer work

Below you find pictures covering volunteer life and activities.

Volunteers House and accommodation, with ablutions.

Island lodges (see the first panorama picture above) and the lioness Mika watching the sunset.

Pictures from the daily lion walks (morning and evening) with one picture of lion cub feeding (bottom row). Observe that there were snakes galore on the savannah, as the two lions Boma and Bakari noticed.

Top row: Cleaning the elephant bomas. Bottom row: Elephant training and herding.

Top row: Drumming prior to dinner, lion pride research and enclosure painting. Bottom row: Feeding (after preparing the meat) and stables/horses activities.

Bushwalk with Evans Mabiza and horse rides.

Volunteer work often includes community activities, e.g. at orphanages. While visiting the Gweru Orphanage, I brought a ukulele, and it was instantly obvious that there was a natural-born talent there, by name of Takudzwo. A few months later I managed to have a ukulele transported there (with the help of African Impact and a volunteer), so now Takudzwo has an instrument of his own, and the very kind and helpful Evans Mabiza is providing instruction.

1.3 – Dell Cheetah Centre

During November and December 2009 me and Miriam Oldenburg were volunteers at the Dell Cheetah Centre in South Africa, south of about Johannesburg. The work focussed on cheetah breeding, and included feeding and exercising the cheetahs, but also included activities such as enclosure maintenance, slaughter and food preparation, game counting and game reserve border patrolling. During the stay I shot more than nine hours of high-definition film, and also collaborated with cheetah breeder Elizabeth D. Duthie to obtain high-quality recordings of cheetah purring which served as the basis for a scientific paper presented at the Swedish Phonetics conference at Lund University, Lund, Sweden.

Volunteer diploma

Vista view of Dell Cheetah Centre, with cheetah enclosures in the centre, and volunteer house to the left. In the background flows Vaal River.

Volunteer work

Below are some pictures depicting some volunteer activities, including feeding, meat preparations, run training and so on.

Our stay at Dell Cheetah Centre was arranged by African Impact and the specific project we volunteered at is the Cheetah Reintroduction Project at Parys, south of Johannesburg.

1.4 – Amakhala Game Reserve (2008)

During November 2008 me and Miriam Oldenburg worked as a volunteers, at the Amakhala Game Reserve in South Africa, located about 70 kilometers north of Port Elizabeth, and next to the well-known Shamwari Reserve. The work focussed on lion tracking and monitoring, general game reserve maintenance, game counting, antipoaching patrolling, and also work at the Paterson orphanage. During the stay I took more than two thousand pictures and more than six hours of high-definition film so there is no possibility to publish more than a very small sample on this page, alas. Below you will find pictures from several different places we visited, with a focus on the Amakhala Game Reserve, but also from other places.

Volunteer diploma

Volunteer, guide and ranger “base”: Paterson Student House, a.k.a. Sandflats Old Railway Station

Volunteer work
Here are a few pictures of the ranger/reserve work we performed, including weeding, slashing, game counts, lion monitoring (with telemetry), inspecting the electric fence, road maintenance etc.

Our stay at Amakhala was arranged by Worldwide Experience and we were asked to write up a report on something we had experienced during the time at Amakhala. One of the stronger moments during our entire stay was when we came across the lion family feeding at night, so here you can download the Amakhala experience report (in pdf format).

Since the three leopard triplets Nimira, Alam and Sami reside at the Born Free reserve at Shamwari, next to the Amakhala Game Reserve where I and Miriam Oldenburg worked as a volunteers, we the opportunity to actually meet with them and in person and partake of a feeding session. Here are a few pictures.

I have also adopted two snow leopards through Care For The Wild. Here is a picture of Alcu and Bagira, the two snow leopards I am currently sponsoring (again, with the help of others). They currently reside at the Issyk-Kul Biosphere Reserve in Kyrgustan.

Finally (so far), I have also sponsoring a wild cheetah through the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an organisation that takes care both of orphaned or injured cheetahs, as well as wild ones.

Another alternative is African Impact who offer several volunteer projects in Africa, covering everything from community work, photo/film and animal rehabilitation.

Over 30 volunteer projects at Amanzi Travel.

A dozen volunteer projects at Enkosini Eco Experience.

A huge amount of volunteer opportunities, including more than 30 wildlife projects, are available at i to i.

“Over 17,000 opportunities” are available through Volunteer Abroad.

A very good web portal for volunteer projects is Charity Guide. Chose between animal welfare, children’s issues, community development, environmental protection or health & safety/poverty.

Green Volunteers offer more than 140 projects in more than 40 countries.

Conservation Africa offer volunteer projects in Southern Africa.

Frontier offers a wide variety of volunteer projects.

Care for the Wild International “is an animal welfare and conservation charity that funds practical projects around the world. We make areas safe from poachers, rehabilitate sick or injured animals and provide sanctuary for those who can not return to the wild. We also act as a global voice for wildlife through research, education and advocacy and expose animal cruelty and wildlife crime.”

WWF offer a large number of different projects all over the world. Also see http://www.panda.org/.

Another organisation is found here: Endangered Wildlife Trust.

A very informative site/organization is the International Society for Endangered Cats (ISEC) Canada.

last, but definitely not leas International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which anyone with an interest in wildlife should join and support. There are also a number of “specialist groups” which anyone with a special interest can join,e.g. the IUCN Cat Specialist group.

Saving Namibia’s large carnivores: Africat.

The Cat Conservation Trust “is a non-profit trust that aims to create public awareness of the plight of the small cats through research and education.”

Text Big Cats, a site “designed to be a tribute to the big cat family. Here you can find facts, photos, news, and other items related to the big cats and the small wild cats.”

Cheetah Conservation Fund provides information about cheetahs, and also possibilities to adopt and/or sponsor wild and captive cheetahs.

The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species: T.I.G.E.R.S..