By Colin Moody from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
So far during our trip in Botswana, we’ve had many great memories throughout the first month, with hopefully many more to come.
This picture is of one of the many great nights shared among the group in Kaziikini camp in concession NG34. However, this night doesn’t rival the first day of rain we got, the relief of cold rain felt like nothing else. Although, there were more than just the great times shared among our group during this nine-day trip in the bush; Sofia, Zach (my man in the picture with me), and I were given the objective of doing our first camera trapping activity for the entire group. To start our project, we had to find five spots to place our different camera traps, set them up with rope, and learn how to operate them. We discussed among ourselves, got some expert advice from our instructor Domini, and we ended up setting two traps up near camp to the north, facing trails commonly used by elephants and other animals such as the hyenas we had seen on our second night of camp. For one of our last three, we placed the camera at a man-made watering hole for elephants and got some incredible photos of them splashing mud, trumpeting obnoxiously loudly (and terrifyingly), and moving in herds towards and away from the trap. The last two we decided to set in the forest to the east of the main road right outside of camp, one slightly to the north and one more to the South of the road. We faced both traps towards the forest in hopes of getting photos of the elephant herds on their way to the watering hole as well as warthogs, impalas and kudus who roam the area as well. We also hoped that we would get lucky and get some pictures of the lions that we had heard at night. After setting the cameras up we waited until the day we left and then we went back and collected them all. Domini has been looking through them in order to clear our blank pictures and label all of the ones we have photographs of with dates and the animals photographed. This has been my favorite camp so far, although we’ve only visited two. It was quite the experience and brought me so much closer to all the people on the trip including my group members, instructors (shoutout Gabe), and last but certainly not least our guides Dix and Pabalelo the most joyous, knowledgeable, and helpful guys I have ever had the chance to learn and work with. I would recommend this experience to any person looking to get a great mind opening experience focused on conservation in such a beautiful environment.