Ingwe Leopard Project

The Valley is known for its mysterious black leopard sightings

I have spent the past 3 months now in Lydenburg South Africa working for the Ingwe Leopard Project. For many people in South Africa it is known as the area where the mysterious black leopards live , but there have only been few random sightings over the past 40 years. The Ingwe leopard Project has been running since 1999 and its aim is to research the amount of carnivores , specifically leopards as the main focus and brown hyena that are roaming free outside of protected areas, since this is where the majority of wildife occurs. The aims of our research is to find out how many different individuals are living in the Valley we live in. We do this first by tracking for their prints in the sand or what we call spoorand by setting out camera traps all around the valley which can be tricky and take some time since you have to predict where the leopard will move and when it will do so. We have successfully photographed the leopard, brown hyena and honey badger and have made more than 30 different and unique casts from the leopards spoor. 

Being the  first time I have worked with camera traps I  actually really enjoy working with them and feel like its Christmas day when I get to go check them after about a week. The camera trap is basically made up of a little camouflage box with a camera inside designed to pick up movement through a sensor and snap 1-3 pictures of whatever has walked by and triggered it. The camera traps we have are from the States and are more geared towards photographing animals such as deer which move at a much slower pace than a leopard or brown hyena would , so it is a bit challenging to get the perfect photo of these intelligent, shy and illusive mammals.

At the current moment we have a man named Dairen Simpson here from the states as well as a film crew following Dairen for a wildlife film series, as he tries to capture and trap leopards with a safe method of leg trapping. Although he had great sucess on our neighboring research area, we had not such luck on our side since the cats arent as use to people or as we call them street smart.

Below is a video that will give you a better idea of what Dairen Simpson does:

Our lucky break came a week ago when one of the farmers in the area told us of a old male bull kudu that had dropped dead from old age. We immediately saw this as an opportunity to get our camera traps all around the carcass in hopes of getting a leopard or brown hyena. Never before has any of these species been photographed on a kill in our study area, so we were hoping to get success. After 4 nights we retrieved our cameras to find we had snapped different leopards every evening and had 3 shots of a brown hyena which was ground breaking! unfortunately for us during the second night a brown hyena had bumped into one of the cameras and knocked the strap used to hold it up against a tree right in front of the lens , so we have around 40 pics of only half of a leopard, brown hyena ,bush pig, and who knows what else. As frustrating as this was , it serves as a learning experience just to prove that nothing runs 100% smooth in research. 

Believe it or not I haven’t seen a leopard in the valley yet! but just looking at the pic below of the area we worked in , you can get a better idea of why this is so.  The only signs we have of their presence is their spoor , scat, pictures and haunting calls throughout the valley.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.