This expedition

With this expedition, Biosphere Expeditions once again collaborates with Dr. Lee as the expedition scientist, after successful expeditions to the Peru Amazon from 2011 to 2016 and South Africa from 2015 to 2017.

The 2015 inaugural South Africa expedition placed camera traps and analysed over 3500 images captured by such traps, conducted 20 km of flush and the first ever small mammal trapping survey, worked on birds and bats, and discovered new locations and examples of ancient rock art. The expedition also hosted a South African national as part of its placement and capacity-building programme. All this in a showcase of how citizen science can work in the face of the proliferation of bogus voluntourism projects in South Africa and elsewhere. The focus on a variety of research projects is what makes this expedition special. A special project with Biosphere Expeditions in 2016 resulted in the first-ever capture of a Fynbos (formerly Hottentott) buttonquail, an endangered bird species endemic to the fynbos. Dr. Lee has since published articles based on the fieldwork from transect surveys on the Fynbos buttonquail. Previous work based on student projects e.g. leopard tortoise mortality on fences and the vulnerability of Cape rockjumpers to climate change have all been published in scientific peer-reviewed journals. In 2025, Dr. Lee led the completion of the regional Red Data Book of Birds of South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini described by BirdLife SA CEO Mark Anderson as “The best regional red data book ever”. The accompanying ‘Birds on the Brink’ book featuring these species and the people trying to save them has received high praise. All these will add more useful pieces to the puzzle of what is known about South African wildlife in academic and conservation circles.

Biosphere Expeditions in general

Since 1999 Biosphere Expeditions has delivered tangible, lasting conservation achievements across four continents – from protected areas established and species safeguarded to local communities empowered. However, with the planet slipping deeper into crisis despite the conservation efforts of many, we have taken decisive further steps outlined in our Manifesto for a Troubled Planet and the book Musings on the Brink. Grounded in this vision, Biosphere Expeditions nowadays stands entirely alone in the volunteering world on many levels: We have purged all commercialism from our operations, organising our expeditions as a non-commercial covenant between consenting adults. We reject "save the planet" hopewashing as well as corporate sponsorship and do not engage in flight offset fig-leaving. We have a mandatory vegetarian expedition policy, a one-expedition-one-report rule, focus strictly on ecological triage and maintain a defined exit strategy for when an expedition reaches its goals or international air travel contracts.

The overarching purpose of all this is to create, extend and empower resilient local biome conservation networks so that they can build and protect refugia wherever possible. Far from being a gloomy exercise, this provides profound meaning and integrity to our conservation work going forward. It grants executive leaders, professional and citizen scientists, as well as our partners the confidence that their hard work is not merely a symbolic gesture in a losing battle against planetary decline, but a targeted intervention that gives functional ecosystems a fighting chance to make it through the global transition period we have entered.

Expedition reports: 2015 I 2016 I 2017

Scientific publications: Habitat variables associated with encounters of Hottentot Buttonquail Turnix hottentottus during flush surveys across the Fynbos biome I Hottentot Buttonquail Turnix hottentottus: Endangered or just overlooked? I Correlates of yield, fecundity and survival of a wild harvested Cyclopia intermedia (honeybush) population I Tortoise mortality along fence lines in the Karoo region of South Africa