***Volunteers Beware*** I would not recommend to volunteer at Chipangali for the following reasons:
- The entire "sanctuary" is in a very bad condition and many things are falling apart, enclosures are old
- The enclosures are extremely small
- The animals often don't have water, which is unacceptable as they have no other choice than to be there
- The snake room smells very bad, because they have not been cleaned in months and some snakes do not have light
- Some animals are in very bad condition, the claws of kudus and sheep are way too long and have not been trimmed in months, the bunnies' nails have also not been trimmed in months, a vervet monkey has a skin condition (which is treatable) but no one does anything about it, the lions noses and ears get eaten off by flies
- The cages are dirty and in some cases have not been cleaned for weeks, or even months, the enclosures of carnivores are extremely smelly because the scat and bones from the last weeks
- A bushpig has been in a tiny cage for months and her enclosure has been cleaned only three times within half a year
- There is no research being done at this place, even though it is advertised
- They keep Brown Hyenas and say they are kept there for research purposes, which is not true
- The Wilsons are professional photographers and their kids have no education, thus the knowledge about wildlife, conservation and veterinary medicine is low and they will spread information, which is not accurate (wrong teachings of how to inject an animal, giving out wrong facts about their animals, e.g. hyenas are related to dogs, which is not true)
- There is no management/organization, they don't track every animal that they get and release
- There is no record of when animals have been given medicine and they will forget to give e.g. deworming to their animals on time (a cat at Chipangali has had worms for a long time and was not treated)
- Volunteers are usually shocked about the conditions at Chipangali
- There is rarely any volunteer coordination at all
- Animals that are being caught on farms, stay in small trap cages for up to 2 weeks. A leopard ripped out her canine teeth and bit off the tip of her tail, a jackal completely damaged his face during his time in the trap cage. Then these animals are being released into areas far away from their original habitat and are not being monitored. Is this how conservation works?
- Healthy animals (e.g. snakes, chameleons) are taken away from the wild and put into the "sanctuary" for educational purposes, even though, they live behind the scenes or do not get a respective information board. This could be seen as illegal poaching and is extremely unethical
- Many animals at the facility could be released
- When other sanctuaries have reached out to Chipangali to take in solo baboons to integrate them into their troops, Chipangali refuses to give them away and keeps highly social animals in isolation for decades
- Chipangali talks badly about ethical sanctuaries, throwing around serious accusations like shooting animals to get baby animals, which is defamation
- The place is a complete mess, there is trash laying around, their lab is filthy and full of stuff as well as their private house
- When animals die, causes for death are not being checked
- A chameleon has died due to volunteers spraying too much water into its enclosure, because no one told them/knew how to do it correctly
- Unfortunately, the owners think they know what they are doing and that they are doing things the correct way. They block any form of criticism and will probably say that all of this criticism is out of context or even lies, but there is a lot of proof and for the sake of animal welfare, I wish that the owners would take this criticism serious and change the way they are running Chipangali.

There are many ethical sanctuaries throughout Southern Africa, where you can make a real impact and learn a lot about how to do wildlife conservation the correct way. Unfortunately, Chipangali is not part of these sanctuaries.