Meet the LEO Africa team

Roelof Niemann - LEO Africa Director
Roelof is the founder of the Limpopo Eco Operations Africa (LEO Africa) volunteer research programme and has extensive experience in wildlife management and conservation.
For most of his adult life Roelof has been involved with wildlife and conservation: as a safari guide, a reserve manager, and an assistant warden of a 22,000-ha big game wildlife reserve. Knowing the critical need for information about the wildlife, and predators in particular, Roelof established LEO in 2004 to provide research and vital information to game reserves in the Limpopo Province in the north-eastern region of South Africa.

Sophie Niemann – LEO Research Advisor
Sophie is the volunteer research and monitoring advisor. She has extensive experience in this field having carried out predator and management research since 1997 in South Africa and Botswana.

Kate Saunders – Programme manager
Kate joined LEO in September 2009 as Programme Manager. Kate has FGASA Level 1 and Trails Guide Theory and joins us from another volunteer programme on a neighbouring reserve where she was staff and has experience with the Big 5 and research. She originally comes from the UK and began her love affair with Africa when she volunteered for 3 months doing wildlife conservation work on a game reserve in the Eastern Cape after finishing a degree in Zoology. There she had the time of her life and it instilled in her a passion for Africa. She returned to England to do an MSc in Conservation before returning to Africa! A year and a half later she was enrolled on the Bushwise Field Guides course and after a year and a half of training and practical experience now finds herself at LEO. Kate has a passion for all big cats and research so is looking forward to contributing to LEO’s success.

Koos Niemann
Koos has had many years of experience in the bush and has worked in the Lowveld for over ten years. His previous jobs include Reserve Manager for a neighbouring Big 5 reserve and he has experience with game capture and reserve maintenance. He is a freelance guide and can be found working at LEO when needed. He knows Selati Game Reserve extremely well and is an expert at tracking lions with or without telemetry. Koos has a passion for conservation through the sustainable utilisation of African wildlife and also has a great interest in alien plant species and their removal.

Phillip Le Leon
Phillip joined LEO in December 2009 as a FGASA Level 1/NQF Level 2 nature guide with Trails Guide Theory. At an early age Philip found a passion for travel, adventure and the natural world. This led him on a life altering adventure through India, Japan, Thailand, Australia and finally South Africa, a country with such an abundance of wildlife and natural beauty that it caused him to fall in love with it immediately. Following this, Phillip entered the software industry in England vowing to return to South Africa to explore it further. After several years of climbing the software industry ladder and having built a life in busy London, Phillip came across the opportunity of a lifetime which incorporated returning to South Africa, his love of nature, adventure and a new career away from hectic city life. The opportunity was a course to train as a field guide in South Africa with a company called Bushwise. Since living in South Africa Philip has found a passion for mammals, insects, bush survival techniques and hopes to install a similar passion for all such things in those lucky enough to visit us here at LEO!

Meet the LEO Africa Team