Two conservation leads just earned their wings in South Africa and will soon fly regular patrols over North Luangwa to keep wildlife safe.
Zambia (14 August 2025) – Two women who usually track wildlife from the ground are about to do it from the sky. Earlier this year, the duo from North Luangwa Conservation Project (NLCP), Marileen (Rhino Project Manager) and Clemmie (Cheetah Project Manager) earned their Private Pilot Licences in South Africa.
Soon, they’ll be taking off on regular aerial patrols over one of Africa’s most important conservation landscapes.
For almost four decades, the NLCP has been the team keeping North Luangwa National Park wild. The oldest section of Africa’s Grift Rift Valley.
Their work is in patrolling the park, restoring habitat, and working with the villages that share its borders. In short, they protect the landscape well and back the people who live alongside it.
The national park is home to Zambia’s reintroduced black rhino population and, in time, will welcome cheetahs back to the region. It’s vast, wild, and not the kind of place you can easily criss-cross in a bakkie.
That’s where airborne conservation makes all the difference. Quick eyes in big skies.
“Aerial surveillance is a critical part of our conservation operations. It allows us to monitor vast, often inaccessible areas quickly and efficiently. From the air, pilots can locate individual animals, detect signs of illegal activity such as poaching or encroachment, and guide ground teams to respond faster and more accurately,” reports the team on the ground at North Luangwa Conservation Project.
For shy, wide-ranging species, those minutes matter.
“This kind of monitoring is especially vital for elusive species like rhino and cheetah, which are often difficult to locate in dense bush and over vast terrain. By having skilled pilots within our own conservation teams, we can respond more proactively, make better decisions and ultimately offer stronger protection to the species we work to save.”
It’s a brilliant conservation boost and a barrier-breaking moment for women in the field.
Conservation aviation is demanding work: early take-offs, sharp navigation, radio coordination with teams on the ground, and split-second decisions when a heat haze or sudden wind shear gets in the way.
Putting trained pilots inside the project team (instead of relying solely on external aircraft) means intel moves faster, and animals get help sooner.
For North Luangwa’s black rhinos, that might be the difference between a routine patrol and a rapid response. For cheetahs preparing for a comeback, it means better site checks, stronger monitoring and a safer landing for a species that hasn’t roamed here in years.
Here’s to Marileen and Clemmie, it’s so good to see women in conservation soar!
Sources: Linked above.
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