It all depends on what species we are targeting and what our objectives are. We use acoustic monitoring (basically, listening to the calls) for many of the nocturnally active species, as this is one of the most accurate ways of identifying each species. A good pair of waders or gumboots and a headlamp are the most important pieces of equipment.

Once, this involved trekking through the snow of the Drakensberg Mountains, in freezing temperatures, without a GPS not knowing whether we would make it back to civilisation! This in the quest of tracking down the type locality (first place a species was described from) for an obscure Lesotho River Frog species. I have also had a few close calls while conducting fieldwork with security personnel questioning why I was out and about at night in the wetlands. Of course, once I explained what I was doing, it was fine! Usually though, being out in the field with the frogs calling around you is extremely tranquil and good for the soul.

My passion for amphibians emerged when I joined the North-West University (Potchefstroom) to do an MSc in Environmental Science. There I met Prof. Louis du Preez who heads up the African Amphibian Conservation Research Group, and almost by default fell into the world of frogs. My thesis was on river frogs of Lesotho, including the second largest species in Africa – the Maluti River Frog, a huge frog that comes complete with teeth. Having to go to the highest peaks of the Drakensberg Mountains and seek these out definitely beat an office job in London – something I had been doing prior to returning to SA.

I carried on with my studies with NWU to a PhD that focussed on SA’s threatened frog species, in the process learning about what was happening globally with amphibians. And it was not good news. While there was, and still is, a lot of excellent amphibian-related research happening in SA, not a lot of this was being applied to direct conservation. And just as globally, our amphibians are under threat too. This realisation led me to want to start my own NGO initially, but ended up joining a well-established conservation organisation instead – the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT). One of my objectives remains to bridge the gap between research and on-the-ground conservation.

Almost all of my work is linked to threatened frog species, which are usually associated with very limited distribution ranges and specific habitat types, most of which are not protected or well-managed, so this is where we focus our efforts. Where a species may occur in several locations, we carry out prioritisation exercises to determine which sites are most in need of intervention. We also look at priority areas in terms of provincial and national conservation importance.

Through the various projects I coordinate, we look at several research streams; monitoring is an important one, looking at species presence/absence, breeding activity and population estimates. We have several projects making use of Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM), recording species calls as a monitoring tool. We also conduct habitat and ecological assessments. We use ecological niche modelling and occupancy modelling, based on field data collection, to better understand the ecological and habitat requirements of species. We are also starting to look at the use of eDNA. All of this ultimately informs better conservation interventions.