Cape Leopard Trust Shares All the Wildlife Snaps Caught on Camera in Little Karoo

An Aardwolf - Photo Credit: The Cape Leopard Trust

The Cape Leopard Trust undertook a ± 2000 km2 survey of wildlife in the “Little Karoo” and managed to capture some incredible photos.

Klein Karoo, South Africa (05 April 2023) – The Klein Karoo (or Little Karoo) is a beautiful place with such a unique landscape. One might almost imagine it as Mars but it happens to be teeming with the most incredible wildlife. The Cape Leopard Trust has several cameras set up in key locations throughout the Klein Karoo. While doing its 2022 survey of animal sightings, it shared some of the best ones online.

The survey consisted of 64 paired camera stations distributed across ± 2000 km2 of mosaic Succulent Karoo landscape – including protected areas like the Swartberg, Gamkaberg and Ruitersbos Nature Reserves, commercial farms, and communal land. The cameras captured over 87,000 photos of wildlife and rangers within the 20-week cycle.

“Initial results from the survey indicate good species diversity with at least 40 mammal species recorded – mostly native wild species like aardvark, aardwolf, honey badger, black-backed jackal and mountain reedbuck, as well as a number of re-introduced and non-native game species like giraffe, nyala, impala and waterbuck. Some interesting finds include a brown hyena, Cape Mountain zebra, several leopard tortoises and a water mongoose. As usual, the cameras also recorded several bird species, including ostrich, Southern black korhaan, helmeted guineafowl, Cape spurfowl, hadeda, Egyptian goose and even a female Cape shelduck with chicks!”

Of the 64 camera locations, they managed to capture photos of leopards at 47 of the sites – an encouraging success rate of 73%. They are using identification software to help identify each of the sightings.

“Using the pattern recognition software of African Carnivore Wildbook and observer confirmation by eye, the just over 600 leopard images are currently being inspected to individually identify leopards – 37 different cats have been identified so far. These identikits were also compared to photos from previous surveys conducted in 2012 (by the CLT) and 2017 (by Panthera). Encouragingly, eight of the leopards recorded in 2017 were photographed again in 2022, and to our delight, one male and one female leopard were detected across all three surveys! These two cats were both likely young adults in 2012, which puts their estimated age at over 12 years old now. This is impressive, considering that on average, African leopards live between 12-15 years, often with significantly lower life spans for animals living outside of protected areas where there often are more threats to their survival.”

These sightings along with other data collected by the cameras will aid in figuring out what the Cape Leopard population is.

Take a look at some of the images captured below. You can see a few more via the Cape Leopard Trust website here.