Cape mountain leopard 3 hours later

As I write Cape Town is locked in the fourth glacial cold front bringing sub-polar air from Antarctica, with freaky hail storms. Inspiring a Chip Snaddon cartoon about bi-polar bears off Cape Town. While Europe is immersed in floods. In Switzerland young birds are battling the cold and wet. There are not enough insects to feed the fledglings and it will be a few good years before the bird population recovers.

Uitkyk Pass looking towards Algeria Forestry Station

At the end of April it was still camping weather, as Jurg travelled the Uitkyk Pass to Driehoek for another week of monitoring traps. He volunteers with the Cape Leopard Trust.  Since he began, they have been trying to recapture wily matriarch Spot to replace the battery in her GPS collar.

Moon over Middelberg

For him, it is a grateful opportunity to get in two long daily hikes in the Cederberg. Sometimes making his own route across the landscape, when the traps are set away from the well-trodden hiking trails.

Baboons at the top of Uilsgat 

Wary baboons

Up in the mountains the baboons are wary of people. Unlike their city fringe cousins, who can become ‘problem animals’. Living with baboons. Jurg sat on the rocks for an hour, as the baboons watched him. They came slowly closer, till they were about 10 metres away. Curiosity grunting back and forth, Jurg and the baboons talking.

Baboons are curious

Megan Murgatroyd researches Black Eagles at Driehoek. She too spent an hour sitting on a rock, watching as her Black Eagles mobbed a Cape mountain leopard.

Cape leopard trap concealed on the path up to Uilsgat

The traps are set, some on the trails. 

At 8AM Jurg is carefully closing the trap, to avoid capturing careless hikers during the day. In the late afternoon he returns to open them again for the night.

Jurg at 8AM closing the trap to avoid capturing  an unwary hiker
Copyright to the Cape Leopard Trust

Cape mountain leopard at 11AM, only 3 hours later
Copyright to the Cape Leopard Trust

By 11AM the automatic camera, which is triggered by movement, proves – here be LEOPARDS! The young male walks past oblivious of the closed trap on his path. This camera trap picture is a wonderful reward for his over 3 years of volunteering with the Cape Leopard Trust.

PS our quarterly Adopt-A-Spot newsletter arrived yesterday. The CLT says 'it's just the delicate matter of getting one [leopard] to step in 20cm squared within a home range of 80km squared!'

On Google Plus via +ScienceSunday first, then from the researcher +Erin Kane, I have discovered there are Diana monkeys.  With ‘a long tail that is often carried in a ‘question mark’ curve’. The Diana guenons live in the rainforests of West Africa. Classified as vulnerable, they are hunted for bushmeat. Their habitat carved up as human pressure grows.

The moon over Middelberg in the Cederberg Conservation Area 

Senegalese ecologist Baba Dioum: "In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."

In September the weather was fierce winter, but the camera trap caught a Cape mountain leopard cub at Mied Se Berg.

Pictures by Jurg Studer and the CLT

text by Diana Studer
AKA Diana of Elephant's Eye
- wildlife gardening in Porterville,
near Cape Town in South Africa

(If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink. Those are my links)