Panthera, the global organisation dedicated to conserving wild cats, and Mapesu has joined up.

We now have a partnership where we conduct their annual leopard survey on our property and neighbours.

Leopards are listed as vulnerable according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) list of threatened species and their populations are decreasing throughout Africa due to reduction in habitats, population growth, hunting, human-wildlife conflict and disease. Accurate numbers of leopards are difficult to obtain through traditional aerial census, so conservationists are using camera traps for this.

The Panthera staff, Mapesu staff and volunteers set up 70 cameras over three days.  Each week we returned to the cameras to take off the photos and to change the batteries. Any animal that walked pass the camera triggered a photo, during the course of 6 weeks, we obtained 36,000 photos.

We are very grateful for all the hard work the volunteers put in to make this survey a success.  We look forward to the challenge of repeating this again next year with Panthera.