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.

As an organisation Biosphere Expeditions has had a great many achievements on four continents. Also, scientific reports and publications for this leopard and African biodiversity wildlife research volunteer project to South Africa are on the reports & publications page. As far as we are aware, Biosphere Expeditions is the only organisation in the world that has a direct and transparent link between the work done by citizen scientists and an expedition report. Each expedition year is matched by an expedition report for that year, which deals with the two main areas that expedition participants contribute to: funding and data collection. Chapter 1 of each report, written by Biosphere Expeditions, reviews the expedition logistics and publishes an expedition budget, which shows in a clear and transparent way income and expenditure for each expedition and the percentage of income spent on the project. Chapter 2 onwards, written by the expedition scientist, shows who collected what data, how they were analysed, what the conclusions were, as well as the conservation recommendations and actions flowing from this, and what future South African animal volunteer expeditions (and others) should do. In this way, each expedition comes full circle for its participants.