National Geographic Experts
A National Geographic expert will accompany each departure to share insights and a rare behind-the-scenes perspective. Listed below are some of the experts and the departure date(s) they will be joining.
Bill Branch
Bill Branch has been a wildlife biologist at the Port Elizabeth Museum, South Africa since 1979 and has undertaken fieldwork from Ethiopia to South Africa and Senegal to Madagascar. Bill is also a general naturalist and keen birder. He has described numerous new species and amphibians, received a grant from National Geographic to help fund his research on African reptiles, and has published six books as well as numerous photographs and scientific articles.
David Bygott
Biologist and artist David Bygott first came to Tanzania in 1969 to work on Jane Goodall's National Geographic-funded team studying wild chimpanzees. David spent four years as a lion biologist for the Serengeti Lion Project, researching lion behavior in northern Tanzania. He later taught zoology to future wildlife managers at the University of Dar es Salaam. He has contributed illustrations to numerous East African guidebooks and visitor centers. David and his wife lived in Tanzania for 27 years.
Jeannette Hanby
Jeannette Hanby earned her PhD for behavioural research on Japanese monkeys. She is fascinated by the mechanisms that keep social groups of any species together. She first came to Tanzania in 1974 to study social carnivores, running the Serengeti Lion Project with husband David Bygott. Since then, she has been active in conservation education and interpretive design. She has established a conservation education program for Tanzanian schools, and helped create educational displays in several of the national parks. She has written books on subjects as diverse as lions, kanga fabrics and human origins. She has been guiding educational safaris in East Africa for 30 years.
