Evening Meeting Thursday 31st of January 2013

We had interesting speakers at last nights' dinner, The Cape Leopard Trust representatives.

Below an extract from the latest Helderberg Happenings:

The Cape Leopard Trust (CLT) was founded in 2004, by Quinton Martins, in the
Cederberg Mountains. He discovered very little was known about the leopard’s way of
life other than it can be found over large areas of Africa and Asia, although man has
severely encroached upon its territory, and it adapts very well to its environment. Once
vast herds, of animals, roamed the Cape Flats; now all that are left are the leopards, who
have retreated to the mountains overlooking the Flats.
These animals are hard to see, but they can be studied by the signs they leave: paw
marks, scat (poo) and scratch posts. The scat, with urine, are used to mark territory as
these solitary animals range over a great distance. They are only seen together when
mating or when a female has cubs. A number of pictures were shown which were taken
by remote controlled camera traps, not only of leopards, but also baboons, aardwolves,
aardvarks, honey badgers, deer, dassies and the occasional hiker. The leopards are
individualised by their spots, each animal has a unique pattern to their fur, and these
pictures enable valuable information to be gathered, such as the size and sex of the
subject.
GPS collars give information about the ranges of individuals, which greatly adds to the
CLT’s knowledge. When the leopards are trapped for collaring they are also weighed,
measured and examined for health defects. It has been noted that leopards in the Kruger
National Park are about twice the size of Cederberg leopards, but their range is tiny by
comparison. One Cape leopard was measured as doing 40kms one night, in its 600 square
kilometre territory, whilst Kruger leopards live in a 25 square kilometre radius. This
strong territorial sense makes it hard to relocate an animal into a different area.
Leopards eat a range of animals: mice, rabbits and hares, dassies, deer, porcupines,
carefully, and a few baboons when they can catch them. Anita has a collection of 180
pieces of scat from which she can identify the prey from the fur remains.
Sadly there is, as with the cheetahs, some farmer/animal conflict and before the CLT’s
intervention 8 animals a year were being poisoned, trapped or shot. Now, thanks to the
CLT’s use of Anatolian sheep dogs, ostriches, alpacas, donkeys, and herdsmen the death rate has dropped to 2 pa.
In 2010 Quinton photographed the first set of leopard cubs in a den, ever to be found, one
of which survived.
Jeannie and Anita are based in the Boland Mountain Range, which they have divided into
three blocks. They have set up 60 cameras varied between 91 sites, in an area of 2000
square kilometres, and that has necessitated that they walk over 1500km a year to gather
the information. They have over 10,000 mammal photos, and 700 leopard ones. To find
out more and to see some pictures of these beautiful animals, as well as being able to
donate to the CLT, go to capeleopard.org.za.