The AfriCat Foundation was established in 1993 to contribute to the long-term conservation of Namibia’s wildlife. Recognising that enclosed, protected areas for wildlife contribute to conservation by offering a solution for habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict, AfriCat is assessing ways that such areas can contribute to wildlife conservation. 

AfriCat’s research is focusing on (i) predators, as they are most at risk of human-wildlife conflict, (ii) endangered species such as rhinos and pangolin that are vulnerable and require safe havens where they aren’t at risk of being killed by people, and (iii) rare species such as serval, caracal, aardwolf and aardvark that we know little about. 

We are taking advantage of our proximity and access to the wildlife in the 220 square kilometre Okonjima Nature Reserve to better understand the survival, home range, genetic diversity, reproductive patterns, and feeding behaviors of key species in the Reserve and their interactions with each other and their environment. AfriCat has one of the longest running leopard monitoring projects in Namibia and in 2023 we enrolled our first third generation research leopard. The AfriCat Pangolin Research Project is one of only a handful of projects studying free-ranging

pangolin and being in a protected area, we are able to focus on non-anthropogenic (human-related) threats to pangolin; a lesser studied area than anthropogenic threats. The brown hyena research programme has re-started; we are aiming to better understand the social behavior of this normally shy and historically heavily persecuted scavenger, including its interactions with the leopards of the Okonjima Reserve.