Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

After just over a month of trapping, the Gouritz team finally managed to capture their first leopard on Groenefontein Nature Reserve, near Calitzdorp. The leopard, an adult male weighing just under 35kg, was in prime condition and didn’t suffer any harm during the capture process. Capturing this particular male was something of a surprise, as he has only previously been photographed at a site approximately 25km west of where we captured him.

We recently received the following story from visitors to the Cederberg:

"My husband and I are just getting to know Cape Town and the surrounding areas – We moved here 22 months ago from Middelburg, Mpumalanga.

We stayed at the Algeria camping site in the Cederberg for the weekend of the 14th of May 2010. On the morning of the 15th, we drove in a South Easterly direction from the camp to do some birding. The weather was cool after a week of rain in the area.

Cape Leopard Trust Annual Report 2010 (pdf)

Cape Leopard Trust Annual Report 2009 (pdf)

The Cape Leopard Trust has received tremendous support from the ABAX Foundation (previously Polaris Foundation), one of our main sponsors over the past few years. We have greatly appreciated that their Board of Trustees has also been out to visit the project on several occasions, and has experienced firsthand, the work we do.

This year, we have received an unbelievably generous donation of R300,000. These funds will be used to boost the research, conservation and education projects in all four study areas of the project. 2010 has already been particularly exciting with new projects all doing exceptionally well. We are confident that the generous support received from the ABAX Foundation will help us achieve our goals of producing tangible and positive changes in our environment.

Thanks to the Three Cities Group and the Deutche Bank Africa Foundation, we have been able to offer camp sponsorship to a number of groups this year. Some camps have already taken place and others are booked for later in the year. 

An extract from an article written for the new ‘Environment’ Magazine, Edition 3 (more about the magazine in this newsletter):

The most recent camp was for the Grade 4 - 6 children of the Grootkloof Primary School, a small community school in the Cederberg. On Friday afternoon, eleven very excited children and three parents arrived at the new campsite at Matjiesrivier Nature Reserve, especially built by the Cape Leopard Trust, in partnership with Cape Nature, as a base for running these environmental camps. For the first time in their lives they set up tents, then set off to explore the campsite. Having spent the last months of 2009 building and decorating the campsite, it was very gratifying to hear the exclamations of admiration as the children were shown the new bathrooms, with their water-saving bucket showers.

The Cape Leopard Trust has collaborated with six other environmental NGOs (Endangered Wildlife Trust; Wildlands; Wilderness Foundation South Africa; Game Rangers Association of Africa; SANCCOB; and WESSA) to start a new magazine on conservation matters called ‘Environment – people and conservation in Africa’.

This magazine runs quarterly issues, and the third issue is due to come out soon. The participating NGOs each buy copies of the magazine and the costs are also subsidized by advertising.  The magazine is packed with interesting and informative articles on current environmental issues, natural history as well as book reviews and a calendar of environmental events. Each NGO also has pages where it provides an article on its work.

Andy Baxter, Chairman of The Cape Leopard Trust, will be giving a progress report. Now have 4 projects - The Cederberg, Namaqualand, Swartberg-Gamkaberg Corridor and Boland. The Boland project is particularly exciting. Andy will tell you more.

We’re thrilled to share the first couple of leopard pictures from the CLT Boland Project’s Limietberg pilot survey! Even though the first camera we checked presented us with only images of hikers walking by, it was with lots of anticipation that we downloaded the next batch of cards we collected.