How can you get involved?
Our volunteers are asked to get involved in all aspects of the park – research, marketing, functions, maintenance, training, guiding, education, etc.
The kinds of things we ask our volunteers to help out with include the following:
- Preparing food for the elephants
- Preparing milk bottles and feeding our two baby elephants. Elephants are weaned at about two and a half years so the feeding of baby elephants would depend on when volunteers are here and if we had milk-fed babies at the park at that time. However, one of our primary objectives is offering care to orphaned calves and we never know when new babies are going to arrive on our doorstep!
- Helping the elephant guides and handlers in the field during daily tours
- Assisting with veterinary care, when necessary
- Environmental education
- General maintenance - mucking out of elephant pens, general cleaning, painting, etc.
- Marketing and advertising, helping with functions
- Dung project - elephant dung makes excellent compost - dung is collected, packaged and sold as compost. The money raised is donated to a nearby primary school.
- Vegetable garden project – we have a vegetable garden, made using recycled tyres as garden beds. The objective of the garden is two-fold – to help teach disadvantaged school children about building their own vegetable gardens; and assessing the effectiveness of elephant dung as a fertiliser, depending on its age.
- One of a volunteer’s main activities will be Assisting with Elephant Research
Projects
Knysna Elephant Park recently identified that there is a serious lack of research done on captive elephants in South Africa, particularly with respect to their welfare and husbandry, within their own unique environments. With this in mind, we established the first captive elephant research unit dedicated to captive elephants - The African Elephant Research Unit.
The objectives of the African Elephant Research Unit are the following:
- To conduct and facilitate research studies of the elephants based at the Knysna Elephant Park and other captive elephant operations in South Africa.
- To promote ethical and non-harmful research of captive elephants in South Africa.
- To guide management of captive elephant operations through science.
- To provide information relevant to wild elephants to improve their protection and conservation.
- “Conservation through education”
In conjunction with the other activities already described, volunteers are also asked to assist Dr. Debbie Young (Director of African Elephant Research Unit) collect research data from the elephants at Knysna Elephant Park. These include the following:
- Monitoring of behaviour – Following and observing elephants in the field, recording behaviours such as grazing, drinking, playing, dusting and walking.
- Recording social interactions between elephants – how they relate to, and communicate with, each other using their trunks and bodies.
- Night-time observations of elephant behaviour – what is a good night’s sleep for an elephant?
- Observing and recording interactions between elephants and tourists.
- Botanical surveys of the park – relating plant diversity to grazing patterns and elephant distribution.
- Studies of feeding behaviour and plants eaten by the elephants.
- Collection of dung, urine and other samples for physiological analysis.
- Recording and assessing elephant response to training and new behaviours.
- Data input and analysis.
- Compilation of educational presentations.
This only short summary of how volunteers can help us with our research but as future projects are implemented, so the volunteer activities will expand. In this way, our volunteers are directly involved in elephant research and aid in providing information that relates directly to the welfare and management of captive elephants – not only at Knysna Elephant Park, but throughout South Africa.
Many of theses projects involve long hours of data collecting in the field and the project is not for the faint-hearted. However, the rewards are many - especially when the elephants begin to recognise you and trust you - you become part of the herd! All we ask of our volunteers is that they be enthusiastic, dedicated, willing and able, keen to get involved with anything and have a genuine love of wildlife.
If you think you’re up for an extraordinary elephant experience, contact us by filling out the registration form.
