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Nitani
Leopard Collaring
Queen Victoria and her King
The Tuli Game Reserve, in which Nitani Private
Game Reserve is situated, is prime leopard country. So we are in
a perfect position to monitor the local population for both conservation
research and because it allows us to learn about every aspect of
‘our’ leopards' lives – including their friendships,
their kills and their love affairs.
After
two years of carrying a sophisticated GPS radio collar around
her neck, Victoria, the female leopard in the picture, was due
to have it removed.
Over the period Victoria has
given us valuable data as to her home range, number of kills,
interaction with other females and passionate encounters with
a very large resident male leopard, who we call King. He is quite
a bruiser --  the
largest male we have ever seen -- and weighs in at nearly 70kg,
compared with Victoria who weighs 35kg.
The evening that I chose to dart,
Victoria followed her two-night feast on an impala kill that she
had made. All that gluttony meant that she was a little lethargic.
The drug we use is very safe
for felines and Victoria was fast asleep within three minutes.
We took the opportunity to monitor her personal hygiene: a check
of her teeth, claws, as well as her skin for any blemishes from
the few territorial skirmishes she has had. She was in perfect
condition, except for the indignity of having lost the tip of
her tail in some skirmish, but which happily had healed completely.
The advantage of these new GPS
collars, compared to earlier technology, is that we don’t
have to habituate the animal. All that we need is to receive her
signal within a 20 metre range and then download all the data
for the period since the last download.
The program on our laptop does
the rest. What we receive is her temperature for every hour, her
exact movements, as well as any stationary period exceeding two
hours in one location.
After weighing her we removed
her collar and waited in the vehicles for her to wake, stretch
and stroll back to the last remnants of her kill, as if nothing
had happened.
We still see Victoria and the good
news is that she appears to be pregnant. Hopefully we will be
able to get some pics of her with her cubs in early spring.
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