Emily completed her undergraduate degree in Zoology at the University of
Bristol, UK in 2004. Throughout the program, she volunteered with the
Mammal Research Group, studying red foxes, brown hares and hedgehogs.
During the summer holidays, she travelled to Costa Rica to work in the
rainforest, and to Poland to help with a grey wolf research project.
Africa had always held a particular fascination for Emily, so after she
completed her undergraduate degree, she secured a position at the
Kalahari Meerkat Project, South Africa. After spending a year there, she
returned to the UK to work as a veterinary nurse for a year, but she
knew that she needed to get back to Africa. Emily’s PhD on African
buffalo with the University of Bristol began in 2007, after a
preliminary three month trip to the Okavango Delta to assist Dr Hattie
Bartlam-Brooks with her research. For the next three years, she lived in
the Santawani area and covered 5,000 km2, following herds of buffalo
around the Delta and sampling the vegetation in sites that they used. It
was a great privilege for her to be able to drive into stunning areas
that few other humans are allowed to access, and it cemented the
knowledge that Botswana was her home. She had to return to the UK to
write up her thesis, and struggled through the two years before she
could leave the country again. She spent 10 months in Limpopo, South
Africa, managing a project on dwarf mongoose, but in January 2014, Emily
finally managed to return to Botswana, managing the Elephants for
Africa study in the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park. However, she really
wanted to focus on ungulates, so she was delighted to be offered the
opportunity in August 2014 to carry out research on large herbivores
through the University of Botswana’s Okavango Research Institute.
Recent publications:
The Ecology of African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) in the Okavango Delta pdf
Bennitt, Bonyongo and Harris (2014) Habitat selection by African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) in response to landscape-level fluctuations in water availability on two temporal scales. PLoS ONE 9 (7) e101346. pdf
Bennitt, Bonyongo and Harris (2015) Behaviour-related scalar habitat use by Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer). PLoS ONE 10 (7) e0145145. pdf
The Ecology of African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) in the Okavango Delta pdf
Bennitt, Bonyongo and Harris (2014) Habitat selection by African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) in response to landscape-level fluctuations in water availability on two temporal scales. PLoS ONE 9 (7) e101346. pdf
Bennitt, Bonyongo and Harris (2015) Behaviour-related scalar habitat use by Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer). PLoS ONE 10 (7) e0145145. pdf