The UK has had the wettest June on record for 100 years, and July looks set to break records also. Here at Somkhanda in Zululand they haven't had rain for months. It's winter here, the driest part of the year. Yesterday I caught a 6am flight from Johannesburg to Richards Bay, and then later that day had a lift north to Mkuze Wimpy to meet the person who would take me to the conservation/monitoring camp at Somkhanda. When I got to Wimpy I learnt that there wa...

Do you remember life before powerpoint and excel? How did anything get done without them? Even in the African Bush I've used them to create a wild dog ID kit to attempt to make it easier to record and identify individual dogs, and also created a similar kit regarding lions. When I arrived back in October at the first research camp, the irony wasn't lost on me, that I'd travelled all that way, and to a camp high up in the forest mountain, and the first thi...

I've now moved back to the research camp at Hluhluwe-iMfolozi. This morning when we went out to monitor the African Painted Dogs we had a great sighting of them - and it's clear that Fossey the new alpha female is pregnant (see the pic). I've never seen newborn Painted Dog pups.....

I was lucky enough to go to a Zulu wedding this afternoon. It was a wedding within the community where I am currently staying, and although I didn't know the bride or the groom, and hadn't been invited, I was assured it was ok for me to go to the wedding. As it turned out, a number of the people there didn't know the bride or the groom either - it's the norm to go to a wedding of a stranger, and not to need an invitation. The ceremony consisted of lots of dan...

Q: so what do 8 cows, 1 bull, 14 goats, 4 chickens, and 1 dog have in common? A: they were all happily using the playground of the school that I went to this morning. As well as endangered and threatened species work, the organisation that I am volunteering with also does some work within the community. One area that they are involved with is in-school ecology and conservation lessons, which they run through the year at the local schools as part of the regula...