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.

Koos Niemann - Programme Manager
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 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.

Adam
Adam was born in the U.K and was raised in Canterbury in Kent. He has been traveling since he was very young but first fell in love with Africa in 2007 when working on building and teaching at a school in Kenya and followed by traveling throughout East Africa. He has worked on and led conservation and environmental education projects in the U.K, some of which involved leading volunteer research groups. He came to South Africa to study at the Bushwise Academy and got a place at Leo shortly after. Adam's passion has always been nature, wildlife and the outdoors in general, but still finds time to fit in some guitar playing at any possible moment! Since being at Leo he has grasped the opportunity to get well acquainted with the Lion and Rhino communities.

Paul
Paul was born in London, studied in art and design to gain a BA in digital design (C.A.D.). Having spent many hours staring at computer screens, working various places like Heathrow airport, as an electrical fitter and almost joining the army, decided to make an extreme change and take a direction into conservation. Swapped the urban environment for the natural one and trained at Bushwise for six months, before being accepted at LEO in Selati reserve. Passionate about the environment, sustainability, nature in all forms and loves to learn continually, especially in this other world. He will also be trying to fit in learning some tai chi, Spanish and all the Afrikaans possible to absorb.

Meet the LEO Africa Team