AWF was once again invited to the WESSA/WWF Eco-Schools Limpopo Province Green Flag Award Ceremony held in Polokwane on Friday January 22nd. Just like last year it was a great honour for me to have been part of such a great event. This also means that I must have behaved very well to be given [...]

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We would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and very warm wishes for 2010. We apologise for slowing down in blog updates, but hopefully this year we will pick up the slack and you guys can see how we are doing regarding meeting our project goals. It is our hope that this year [...]

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From arriving here five months ago, being introduced to all the wonderful people at WildCRU (great bunch of dedicated people) getting stung by nettles (in a touch rugby match), catching chicken pox (which was thought to be swine flu), and going on with the studies, studying at the University of Oxford has been a great [...]

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I wanted to give you a quick update while Nakedi is away: after a long time of not finding any leopards, and getting very discouraged, I was thrilled recently to get some great data on the leopards that use the concesson. A few of the camera traps at different times captured three different leopards–two males [...]

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I would like to say hi to all of you who have been following and supporting Nakedi’s work. My name is Nnzumbeni Tshikalange — Nakedi introduced me in the previous blog. I am going to share with you my first experience in the bush. On my first day I had to remove all the cameras [...]

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I would like to introduce you to Nnzumbeni Tshikalange who is running the Limpopo Leopard Project for the next few months. Nnzumbeni hails from the Limpopo Province near Thohoyandou, the capital city of the former Venda. She obtained her bachelor degree in Zoology from the University of Limpopo. Prior to my departure from the field, [...]

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I apologise for the long pause in posting a blog. I have temporarily left the study site to pursue a Postgraduate Diploma in Wildlife Conservation Practice offered by the University of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) and funded by the Panthera Foundation. WildCRU is a unit of the Department of Zoology and is led [...]

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So far the cameras haven’t captured any leopard with the new method that we are trying out. Using the biased sampling design, after three weeks (21-22 days) we had already captured three different leopards. The new method therefore must be jazzed up a little (thanks Craig!); hopefully this will influence the chances of capturing leopards. [...]

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I must apologise for the long silence regarding the emergence of the fat cat. Thank you to Rob and Tionette Geddes for willing to share pictures of this lovely creature. The leopard looks like he swallowed a three and a half metre long python. Enjoy!

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Receiving the 20 brand new cameras is a blessing for us. I am extremely grateful for this. We are finally able to experiment further on the most efficient way to get reliable results from the use of cameras. In the first part of the survey we relied heavily on what the guides knew about leopard [...]

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