The Ranch offers you endless opportunities to be involved in protecting and returning animals to the wild, to know you have done your bit in saving our environment and its treasures and to have your own life changing experience. You will have great fun on Imire Ranch as you give and receive.

The daily life of a student will include...

• Learning to handle the rhino
• Cleaning out pens and gathering the evening browse.
• Walking with the rhino and spending quality time with these wonderful animals in order to collect valuable data on their behaviour and ecology
• Interaction with the orphan babies providing the contact and security they need during this time important time in their lives
• You will be playing a vital role in protecting these ancient animals
• Your Time with the Elephant
• Be part of the Imire herd
• Daily student duties
• Anti poaching
  • Volunteers will be expected to go out on anti poaching patrols.
  • These are conducted on foot, horse back or with the elephant.
  • Patrols can last up to 2 days and nights with at least 2 members of staff…you will carry your own supply of food.
  • Anti poaching sites are recorded and photographic evidence taken.
  • Snares will be collected and recorded as evidence.
• Animal Monitoring daily basis. You will be expected to help record all information.
  • Mapping and photographing species in their herds.
  • Water dependency.
  • Interactions with own species and others.
  • Competition within and between species.
  • Aggression within species and between species.
  • Dominance and hierarchy.
  • Dead animals...Post-mortems and genetic sampling.
  • Breeding successes and failures.
  • Data collection.
  • Plant and tree Identification.
• Boma duties
  • Handling of orphan animals and pen cleaning.
  • Early morning rhino / elephant feeds and handling.
  • Lion, hyena and crocodile feeding.
• Other Duties
  • Game counts and observations.
  • Maintenance of game fences, roads, fireguards, pens, stalls and equipment.
  • Building and maintaining bush camps.
  • Tree planting and bush clearance.
  • Ranch patrols on foot and horseback
  • Ploughing and wood collection with elephant
  • Safari lodge management

Community Involvement

We are involved in a local primary and secondary rural community school. Projects are:

• Aids Awareness
• Teaching skills for self sufficiency.
• Permaculture - establishing Organic gardening and educating rural children and their parents on vegetable gardens and cropping using this method.    Conservation - conserving wild animals and environmental issues…using Imire Safari Ranch facilities

Possible projects for those who wish to study

There are a wide variety of projects available. Due to the semi habituation of the large mammals they are easy to study.

Some ideas :

• Monitoring, close observation and behaviour of rhino, buffalo, elephant and all the antelope species.
• Mal imprinting in wildlife e.g waterbuck joining blesbok , elephant with rhino, impala with tessebe. Enzou ( cow elephant) who has become a matriarch with a herd of buffalo.
• Effects of early summer burning on the bush and grassland
• Liverfluke and tick born diseases in wild animals and cattle.
• Grazing effects on legumes and grasses
• Flora identification