Our Stories

Marcus Westberg provides insight into vulture conservation - both the wins and the challenges - and the value of Vulture Safe Zones, like Tswalu, that provide safe habitat for vultures to reestablish populations across Africa.

In Part two in our Q&A with Wits master’s student Daniel Rossouw, find out more about his methodology for gathering data, for example studying soil samples, to determine the pangolin’s role in the ecosystem.

In part one of a two-part Q&A, Daniel Rossouw tells us how he came to be researching pangolins on the Tswalu reserve, a new project that falls under the umbrella of the Kalahari Endangered Ecosystem Project.

Photographer and explorer Thomas Peschak explains what goes into producing images for National Geographic that also highlight conservation issues, like climate change.

Researchers from Dedeben, led by Dr Wendy Panaino, tagged a pangolin pup for the first time in 2021 to find out what would happen when it left its natal home range.

How does one go about studying the food preferences of one of the world’s most shy and elusive mammals? In a recent article researcher, Dr Wendy Panaino addressed the puzzle of what pangolins eat by collecting pangolin scats.

One of the tagged pangolins became a central character in Leonie’s story. On her very first night, after several hours of following the pangolin’s tracks with the researchers through the dunes to its burrow, she had a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Thomas Peschak’s assignments for National Geographic have taken him all over the world. Several months spent with the Tswalu Foundation led to a story for the iconic magazine about the impact of climate change on biodiversity in an arid savannah.

PhD candidate Valery Phakoago is studying population densities, habitat preference, diet and activity patterns of aardvarks and Temminck’s ground pangolins at Tswalu Kalahari, a project which falls under the KEEP climate-change programme.