Remember Dongo, the wild dog that was injured after being hit by a car? He was looked after for more than 20 years! Normally they live to about 7 years in the wild so, despite his permanent injury, he was well looked after! We are sad to tell you that he was put down to [...]
Nyalou the Nyala Nyalou the Nyala joined the DAKTARI Family in 2016 as an orphan. He was abandoned by his mom for two days in the bush and was in desperate need of help. Without any hesitation, Michele cared for him and bottle-fed him. With a lot of patience, dedication, and love, Nyalou became healthy [...]
THE STORY OF WELCOMING TWO UNEXPECTED BABY DASSIES Saturday afternoon, as I was in the Lapa, I heard Nikita our (Rottweiler) dog crying in fear, I immediately thought she got bitten by a snake. I ran and found Nikita’s tail between the legs and head down. As I was searching for the snake, I heard [...]
Discover the Wildlife Vet Online courses! Wildlife Vet Expedition Project. As a Wildlife Orphanage, we are the forever home to many injured or orphaned animals that require special attention and care. Ian and Michele have many years of experience caring for wild animals. However, it is critical to have a qualified vet to care for [...]
The Brigitte Bardot Foundation is a French Foundation created in 1986 by the famous actress Brigitte Bardot. Their mission is to protect animal welfare and animal rights in France and all over the world. Over the years, the Brigitte Bardot Foundation has shown great support to DAKTARI. For instance, they have sponsored the building of [...]
This is the lovely story of Michele and her dassies: The time we are going through due to the pandemic is very sad and lacks all forms of enthusiasm. Therefore, I decided to share my Dassie story hoping it will put a smile on your face at least for the day! Everybody knows by now [...]
We are glad to share the following animal updates with you! DASSIES The four youngsters of the dassie family had grown significantly so we decided it was time to let them go! We released the family of 6 altogether at the end of June. We keep feeding them from time to time to help them [...]
DAKTARI keeps supporting the communities during these difficult times by distributing food parcels. So far, we have distributed 500 parcels, or 42,000 meals to 9 different villages. Let us take you through the whole process so you can have an idea of how we do it! How did we choose the families? We work with [...]
Fighting Hunger During COVID-19 We are all going through unprecedented and challenging times, and as it is a small NGO, DAKTARI is heavily impacted by this crisis. Schools and borders have been closed since March, thus we cannot run our onsite environmental education program. This has resulted in a significant lack of income when we [...]
First of all, we hope that everyone is keeping well during this COVID-19 outbreak crisis, and our thoughts go out to those who have been impacted by the virus in any way. At DAKTARI we have taken some measures at the early stages to help prevent the spread of the virus: - We are not [...]
Mobotse. Mobotse in Sepedi means beautiful in English. Mobotse is the word that comes to my mind when I look back at the two weeks I spent at DAKTARI. Mobotse were the office staff, the volunteers, the kids, the kitchen and maintenance staff, and the animals. Mobotse is the Sepedi language I tried to speak. [...]
Goodbye Our Beloved Martin It is with a broken heart that we announce that our beloved cheetah Martin passed away peacefully on February 17th. Martin had not been feeling great in the past few days. He is old, around 20 years old, so we were monitoring very closely for any sign of potential sickness. On [...]
A Lifelong Dream Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Chloé. I just turned 27 years, wow that’s old! I was born and raised in Belgium and have been traveling all my life but mostly in Europe. The reason I decided to come to DAKTARI is not that simple. I have had a [...]
Welcoming Pacou But Pacou is a waterbuck that was brought to us back in April. We raised bottle-fed him and did everything we could to save him. Raising antelope is a big task that requires a lot of time and effort and that doesn't always have a happy ending. If you'd like to see how [...]
December 22nd, 2019 was an exciting day for our banded mongooses (and everyone at the camp)! […]
Before coming to volunteer for a year, our marketing manager Silke set up a fundraiser for our organization. She raised almost R27.000 and decided to use that money to renovate the dorms for the children attending our environmental education program. The dorms were in need of a new lick of paint and some renovations and [...]
Hi my name is Bethany, I’m 18 years old and from Northern Ireland. I stayed at DAKTARI for 6 weeks. I came to DAKTARI as it offered me a chance to work with children and animals, helping me to figure out which I preferred to work with, while also allowing me to experience Africa through [...]
Sunday was an exciting day for our winners of the week from the past 8 weeks! They were invited by Sausage Tree Safari Camp to go on a game drive on their beautiful reserve. The children had an amazing experience as they saw rhino, elephants, hyena, zebra and many more incredible wildlife! And all of that because they [...]
Catherine was only 18 years old and had just finished high school when she came to volunteer at DAKTARI for 3 weeks in summer. She had always dreamt about South Africa and DAKTARI was the perfect mix between teaching kids and taking care of wild animals. This was 10 years ago and yet Catherine still [...]
July was a busy month here at DAKTARI. With a big group of volunteers we couldn't possibly let everyone teach the whole day. But luckily there was still a lot to be done around the camp! We split our volunteers into two groups. These two groups switched daily between teaching and maintenance. That way everyone [...]
Last week our volunteers that Thelma, one of the children that stayed with us for the week, couldn't see well. Volunteer Maria "Madu" jumped in right away to help her. Thelma wasn't able to follow our environmental education program as easily as the other kids in her group as she couldn't actually see properly. She [...]