Get Involved

The Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust offers internships/externships to people interested in wildlife conservation with experience in animal handling, ecology, zoology, veterinary and pre-veterinary disciplines, laboratory diagnostics, and a range of other fields. Interns/Externs will have the opportunity to be based at the Trust’s operational base and wildlife disease and forensics laboratory situated in Victoria Falls National Park, on the Wild Horizons concession. This facility is about 15 minutes from the town of Victoria Falls in a wild area below the Falls themselves. In 2016 the Trust  opened the doors to a clinical animal welfare facility nearby that is a collaboration with an Animal Health Organization. This facility is off-site about 8kms away from the Trust’s lab and offices. Interns/Externs may get involved in some of the projects at the animal welfare facility depending on experience and timing.

We suggest interns apply for a slot in a five week intake. This is mutually beneficial to the project and the intern in that it allows enough time for getting involved in a project and accomplishing work on the ground as well as providing the intern with valuable experience. All projects have both field work as well as office work involved in entering data collected from the field or following up on research information.

Applicants must be over the age of 18 to participate as a Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust intern. Most interns have had 3+ years in their University Degree courses and/or are graduate students, or professionals looking for hands on experience. Depending on the time of year, age, experience and interest, various projects are available. Regrettably volunteer and attachment positions are not available.

A few of the projects we offer

• Rescue and rehabilitation of Wildlife– we take in wildlife that has been injured through human interference, this project is dependent on if any wildlife has come into the facilities. It is not a full-time project and clinical work is rather limited, but interns are responsible for the daily feeding and monitoring of any rescue and rehab cases that come in. This includes mammals, birds of all types, the odd reptile, and some small primates.
• Predator Conservation project– The Trust works together with Oxford University’s WildCru Hwange Lion Research project to understand the regional population dynamics of lions and other large carnivores. This project involves monitoring lions that have already been collared, following up on the spatial data to get visual sightings of the cats, evaluate kill sites, conduct spoor transects and change collars on the cats when they are failing.
• Vulture Population Research– In recent times Zimbabwe has experienced a surge of poisoning. Vulture species are a bystander in this malicious poaching and are being affected when they feed on the carcasses of poisoned animals. The Trust is researching vulture nest sites by species to assess and monitor the population.
• Human-Wildlife Conflict is a major problem for the communities that border wildlife areas. The trust has been conducting research on conflicts for more than 5 years. This project entails monitoring our conflict hotline and responding to every conflict incident to evaluate the incident, and to work with local communities to put mitigation solutions in place to try and prevent future conflicts.
• Wildlife Disease Surveillance- Every animal that we dart or treat we take a range of samples from. Get involved in processing of the samples as well as a basic analysis of some of the samples at our Wildlife Disease Diagnostic Laboratory. If you are a pre-vet or veterinary student this is a good project for looking at zoonotic and transboundary animal diseases.
• Darting of wildlife is opportunistic and mainly during the dry season in which the Trust staff are called on to assist in immobilizing wildlife to take off wire snares or treat wildlife that has been harmed due to human interference.
• Vaccination Programs are conducted annually in conjunction with Victoria Falls Animal Health Centre. Get involved in providing rabies and canine/feline vaccinations to the community in and around Victoria Falls. Help us prevent disease transmission between domestic pets and wildlife.