Camera Traps... and Beyond!

Nakedi Maputla October 8, 2008

About the Author

Nakedi Maputla is African Wildlife Foundation’s Senior Conservation Scientist. He joined AWF in 2007, working in South Africa's Limpopo region, where he comes from. Nakedi's initial work was focused on studying the great African cats to shape conservation strategies to benefit communities that he… More

During the week of October 20th we’ll add the second aspect of the leopard research. The first two of the twelve leopards will be captured and collared. The other ten will subsequently be collared, depending on the rate of success with fund raising. The type of collar that we’ll use is the GSM or cell phone collar.

For starts, we will collar a male and a female. The use of collars will help us to

  1. Understand the land use patterns of the leopards relative to the other carnivores, namely lions and hyena;
  2. Get an insight in to how far in to Mozambique these animals go. Of interest will be the nearest communal land, Mapulanguene, which is about 10 km from the fence. We can finally follow up on the relationship between leopards and humans as it happens; and
  3. Document the type of prey that will be taken during that period; also relative to lions and hyenas.