My time at Conservation Lake Tanganyika (CLT) is by far the most wel documented experience on this website up till now as you can see in the blogs that I wrote during my time at CLT.
In the summer of 2014 I got the opportunity to start working for CLT. With Africa being my passion, I decided to follow my dreams and I wholeheartedly accepted the challenge which meant that I was travelling to Zambia in October to become the General Manager for CLT. While travelling all the way up from Lusaka, I realised that the village of Nsumbu was indeed very far off the beaten track and that there were some huge conservation challenges up in that part of Zambia.
Elephant Road block
Nsumbu National Park is one of the most amazing conservation areas that I have ever visited. The crystal clear waters and white beaches were almost unreal, especially in combination with the vast woodlands and savannas that line the shores. Although lots of animals within the park have almost been driven to extinction over the last decades and especially because of the war in neighboring Congo, there still is a lot of wildlife left. Elephants often visited the lake shores when I was there and huge herds of puku roamed the savanna areas. As for the lake shores and the gorges leading up to the savanna plains on top, I’ve never seen a more diverse stretch of land within a transect of about 1 kilometre.
My work at CLT mostly had to do with conservation implementation with one of the biggest tasks to arrange for the anti-poaching units to be deployed on a regularly basis. When you are far out, everything becomes incredibly expensive and making sure that our anti-poaching units were able to go on patrol has been the first priority for CLT for quite some time now.
Lights and snares
Next to taking care of our anti-poaching units, I also initiated the frist ever camera trapping project in Nsumbu National park to find out what critters are still lurking in the bush. The best part of any camera trapping activities is seeing what came across the cameras during my absence. It was great to find out that there were still lots of animals left in the park.
