Her passion for the African bush – thanks to her annual family safari holidays to wild reserves like South Africa’s Kruger National Park, Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, bordering South Africa and Botswana, and Botswana’s Chobe National Park (to name a few) ultimately led her to pursue a career in wildlife research and conservation.
Charli completed a three-year BSc Degree in Biodiversity and Ecology in 2014, followed by her honours degree in 2015 at the University of Stellenbosch, set within South Africa’s beautiful Western Cape winelands region.
She continued her studies and in 2017 she obtained her Masters in Conservation Ecology, also through Stellenbosch University. Her Master’s thesis focussed on the ecology of plains zebra in Majete Wildlife Reserve, Malawi, to improve our understanding with regards to their demography, diet, and behaviour.
In 2018, she joined the &Beyond Phinda Conservation Team, as one of Phinda’s Ecological Monitors and has been with the company ever since. With the reintroduction of pangolins into &Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve in June 2019, her responsibilities were extended to leading the Pangolin Reintroduction Project at Phinda.
My life goal is to contribute towards the conservation of African wildlife and protect it for future generations. I’d like my children to see a pangolin one day – something so elusive, so rare. There’s no other mammal like it.
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