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This all-female anti-poaching unit choose education over guns to help project the wildlife. Through close monitoring, community building and education the 30 strong team help save South Africa’s endangered rhinos and elephants. Every Black Mamba spends 21 days straight patrolling the Balule by 4WD or foot. If you wish to see the Black Mambas at work, speak to your Lightfoot Travel Designer.
Jane Goodall is the foremost expert on chimpanzees. She discovered that these super intelligent creatures make tools, eat and hunt for meat. They also display social behaviour similar to that of their closest relative in the animal kingdom – humans. Jane first set foot as a researcher in the Tanzanian jungle in 1960 and never really left. In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute to support her work at Gombe and protect chimpanzees in their natural habitats. Then in 1991, she launched Roots and Shoots, which has become a global youth community action programme to improve the environment.
American marine biologist and National Geographic Explorer Sylvia Earle was the first female chief scientist of the US National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration. She founded Mission Blue, a non-profit foundation for protecting and exploring the Earth’s ocean. She is revered by the marine community and is lovingly called ‘Her Deepness’.
National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Beverly Joubert has been photographing and researching wildlife for more than 30 years. She spends most of her life in a Jeep or under canvas helping to highlight the plight of animals in the wild. She could have rested on her laurels after winning Emmys for her work, but with her husband filmmaker Dereck Joubert, she chose to take her work one step further and launched the Big Cat Initiative, where they create on the ground protection efforts to stop poachers, and the Great Plains Foundation where they moved 100 rhinos to safety.
Canadian Birute Galdikas had long been inspired by the work of Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall. So much so that when the zoology graduate met paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, she asked if he could help her establish an orangutan research facility in Borneo. Leakey and the National Geographic Society did just that and Galdikas was able shine a spotlight on the creature whose home was rapidly being destroyed. Her work was seen as groundbreaking. She now lectures at a university in British Columbia in Canada and Jakarta in Indonesia and is president of the Orangutan Foundation International.
Main photograph: Beverly Joubert

From $16,450 pp
Russian High Arctic
- Sail around the Russian High Arctic in luxury with all modern comforts onboard Sea Spirit
- Experience a true expedition cruise to the rarely visited Franz Josef Land archipelago
- Visit a soviet-era research facility, once a base for polar exploration
- Look out for colonies of nesting seabirds on the rugged, steep cliffs of the islands
- Spot polar bears, walrus and endangered bowhead whales around the archipelago

From $9,770 pp
Arctic Wildlife Safari
- Search for polar bears hunting seals in the pack ice on an arctic safari
- Explore historical sites including early whaling camps, trappers’ cabins, deserted coal mining operations, and an abandoned polar research station
- Sea kayaking near tidewater glaciers and icebergs
- Look out for humpback whales from the outdoor decks
- Take advantage of the included photography program and learn alongside the onboard expert

From $8,050 pp
Mongolia’s Eagle Hunting Festival
Ulaanbaatar & Central Heartland
- Living alongside a nomadic eagle hunting family and learning about their age-old traditions and ways of life
- Attending the annual Ulgii Eagle Hunting Festival and getting caught up in the excitement of this event which locals spend their lives training for
- Experiencing a less mainstream part of the country and really getting off the beaten track