Big 5 Safari Reserve
Overview
Day to day activities
Spotting lions and researching their hunting patterns, checking fences and doing reserve maintenance, tracking, guided walks, animal counting, helping at local community center.
What’s included
Accommodation, meals, coordination, laundry, cleaning lady, fun activities.
What’s excluded
Flights, visas, insurance, transfers to reserve, personal luxury items.
Accommodation
Fully equipped shared rooms in a comfortable lodge with kitchen, bathroom, linen and laundry.
Requirements
Love for animals and nature, physically fit.
Working Hours
Flexible, but we start early most days.
Nearest town
Paterson (Eastern Cape).
Guaranteed
Working and living amongst the magical Big 5 and enjoying the African bush and all its animals.
About
This Big Five Safari Reserve began in 1999 as a joint conservation venture. Today the reserve consists of six independently owned lodges. The lodges are owner managed by the descendants of the original families who arrived here with the British settlers of 1820. The lodges offer various styles of accommodation, which include two gracious colonial homesteads, two classic bush lodges, an historic Inn and a settler farmhouse to offer diversity to guests.
The Big Five Safari Reserve volunteer project is a unique conservation initiative that allows animals to be re-introduced to the area where they once roamed freely and so making a contribution to the conservation of our natural heritage. The land was used to ranch sheep and cattle up to the turn of the century. The challenge has been to re-establish the original flora and fauna species to the area and to return the land to nature.
Gap year students and volunteers can be part of this bigger picture and work and live on this reserve and help with all the aspects of running a safari reserve in Africa.
Guidance & Supervision
Steve is a very experienced game ranger who will take you to and from the volunteer house to the reserve, work together with you and teach you all there is to know about the land, plants and animals.
Tasks
As a Volunteer at the Big Five Safari Reserve, your primary responsibility is managing the free roaming lions, with the rest of the day filled with tasks and duties based around the reserve. You may also have the chance to assist with many ongoing short and long term projects on the reserve. The list below provides the details of various projects experienced by past volunteers.
Duties may change at any time, which means no week at the reserve will be the same!
Short term projects:
- Game capture, counts and monitoring
- Medicinal use of plants and vegetation biomes
- Guided walks, tracking and trails through the reserve
- Nocturnal predator monitoring
Long term projects:
- Game Counts
- Animal Tracking using telemetry
- Territorial ranges and feeding range monitoring
- Lion health and breeding monitoring
- Giraffe movement and breeding monitoring
- Local community sustainability
- Assisting vulnerable children and aids orphans
- Birds in Reserves Project
General reserve duties:
- Erosion control
- Fence patrol and maintenance
- Herbarium development
- Alien plant control
- Bush clean and clear up
- Road maintenance
- Boma maintenance
Why?
Working and living on a safari reserve is a dream of many and this is the opportunity to be part of a bigger picture. Although changes take a lot of time and are difficult to see in a few weeks, your role as a volunteer or gap year student does add to the restoration of the land to what it once was. The re-introduction of animal species, maintenance of the reserve and the care for the animals, they are all aspects that are partly financed through the volunteer project. By participating you don’t only help on the reserve itself, physically, but you also contribute to the future financially.
You also have the possibility to see more than just the reserve. You can spend some time at the community project in Paterson as well, giving you the chance to see South Africa and its people in a different light and to put things into perspective.
Accommodation
Volunteers are accommodated in a one-storey 7-bedroom house, which overlooks a large garden and is within walking distance of the local bar and basic shops. Most of the rooms are doubles, with 3 sharing one bathroom, 2 sharing a second bathroom and 2 rooms being en suite. Each bathroom has a hot water shower and toilet.
A communal dining and sitting room with digital satellite TV is central to the house, with a well equipped kitchen and office space adjoining. A sun room provides an additional seating room where the internet and telephone are available. The internet is charged at R10 per 30 minute interval. If you spend less than 30 min the R10 rule still applies and phone calls can be made from the telephone using a World Call Card.
The house also has an outside seating area with braai (BBQ) and fire pit for chilly nights and social gatherings.
Location
The reserve is situated in the Eastern Cape, 85 kilometres from the Port Elizabeth airport, in a beautiful area. The environment provides a home for a vast quantity of animals and vegetation, truly a feast for the eyes. Your home whilst working on the Big Five Safari Reserve will be in the town of Paterson. This town was once an important railway link until steam trains were derailed in the 1980’s. By 1996, the rail functions had been transferred to the city of Port Elizabeth and Paterson became semi-dormant.
The farming community of Paterson saw a clash of domestic and wild animal hunting interests, which caused the eradication of ‘problem animals’. Substantial parts of the area since have become sanctuaries for wildlife and nature-based conservation. The last 200 years have seen dramatic changes in the farming and conservation around Paterson, with several farms diversifying into game reserves. The local community is actively involved in the running of these game reserves, retraining from farmers and labourers into maintenance and service workers. Paterson has since become a busy town offering a Café, coffee and cheese shop, fuel stations, Take-away, 2 mini-supermarkets, a post office and the popular Sand flats Public House.
Fees and Dates
Included in the fee is accommodation, meals, a cleaning lady and a once a week laundry service. All the training programs needed for doing your work at the project are also included. The price excludes the transfer, ticket to SA, vaccination and visa.
If you want Khaya to arrange the transfer from Port Elizabeth to the project, this will cost you an additional R550 one way. If you also would like to be picked up at the end of your volunteering period, the total price for both transfers will be R1100. The costs for participating in the project are as following:
1 week R 4800
4 weeks R 18 200
All extra weeks will be charged R 4400 per week.
The project starting dates are flexible.
An extra booking fee of R500 is required if you need Khaya to arrange transfers, accommodation and bus tickets as well as external travel arrangements. This fee lets Khaya handle your travel arrangements completely.
Currency Converter
| Accommodation & Meals | 50 % |
| Project management | 20 % |
| Admin and marketing costs | 20 % |
| Staff costs | 10 % |
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Testimonials
Rosanne (Netherlands)
Volunteering in South Africa was a life changing experience for me...
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