It started with a phone call.

“Do you still have those leopard traps?” asked Rob, a wildlife vet calling camp from Maun. Megan confirmed that we did. Our cage traps had not been used for a few years, but we knew one of them would be serviceable. – “Why?”

Rob explained he had been contacted by one of the local tourist camps about a leopard. It apparently had taken up residence with its young cubs in an unused (pandemic times) staff tent. Rob, more than 3hrs drive away by 4×4,  would not be available immediately. So we agreed to go take a look.

At the camp, an officer named Kenosi from the Department of Wildlife and National Parks. identified himself and offered to show us – on foot – through to the staff quarters and the tent where the leopard apparently had made its den.

“Is she in there now?” I asked, rather urgently.

“No. She left this morning,” replied Kenosi. He seemed certain, but it was hard to share his confidence. The temporarily unused (since a large acacia had fallen on it and collapsed the front half) tent was among seven or eight identical semi-permanent wood framed canvas structures, arranged in a semicircle, erected on decks with doors all facing inwards towards a central communal area.  The other tents were all in good condition, but the fallen tree had landed partially on the deck, sending it tilting backwards, shattering the tent windows and warping the door frame so that the door hung ajar.

“When I looked in the window this morning, I came face to face with her,” explained Kenosi. “Luckily she just ran away, through the door there.” It was encouraging to learn that the female was not overly aggressive about protecting her cubs, perhaps as a result of her apparent habituation to human neighbours. But still it felt like Kenosi had been more than just a bit lucky. The ‘window’ he had looked through was a flap that had been cut in the canvas, creating a porthole into the bathroom at the back of the tent. As we took our turn to peel back the canvas and peer inside, I hardly knew what to expect.

Even knowing there were cubs inside it was a shock to come face to face with two tiny leopards, pawing at each other lazily as they lay in a sunbeam amongst the broken debris littering the tent floor. They looked innocently up at our faces and appeared entirely unperturbed. One struggled to its feet and moved unsteadily towards us.

“OMG,” said Megan. Megan took a couple of quick photos and I grabbed a short video on my phone to help Rob age the cubs. We had seen enough to know what we were dealing with and didn’t want to push our luck. We backed hastily away, glancing nervously behind the tent, constantly expecting an angry, spitting adult leopard to explode out of the surrounding brush.

“What do you think?” asked Kenosi.

“It’s unbelievable,” I said. “How long have they been there?” Kenosi wasn’t sure. He thought they might have been discovered on Wednesday. Today was Sunday. But the cubs’ eyes were open. They must have been born at least a week ago. I looked at the neighbouring tents, just metres away from this unusual leopard den – too close for everyone’s comfort and safety as well as for this mother leopard.

“Let’s talk to the staff,” I said. “I want hear their thoughts about this.” Three men were working on a water pipe on one of the neighbouring tents. I asked them if they were scared about the leopard living next door. They seemed concerned but not nervous. They wanted the leopard gone, but they were not panicked..

“What about the person who lives in this tent?” I asked.

“She is not happy,” the men admitted. And I couldn’t blame her. We all agreed the leopard was too close and that something needed to be done. There was a proposal to translocate them, but we agreed trapping her wouldn’t be easy and it seemed like a poor option anyway. Darting a nervous and/or angry leopard in a fenced staff camp felt like a recipe for disaster. Besides moving them elsewhere, probably into another leopard’s territory, would surely be a death sentence for the cubs and probably the mother too.

After further discussion, we all agreed the 1^st prize would be if we could encourage her to move the cubs herself – to somewhere more typical, in the bush and outside the staff camp. We thought if we could make her believe the den was less secure than she thought when she put her cubs inside, maybe she would move the cubs away. This plan would require the camp staff to agree and accept the plan, – possibly a big ask. Then there remained the government DWNP guys still to convince. We explained our thoughts about the risks of trapping or darting to Kenosi, but he initially looked doubtful. Further discussion however turned him enough that he seemed willing to consider our proposal.

Then, it was time to talk to Onks the camp manager. We again ran through the options, explaining why darting or trapping were options fraught with risk, and then we pitched our proposal to somehow evict the squatting leopard. He too was sceptical.

“What if she doesn’t move the cubs far enough away?” he asked. We conceded that was a risk, but argued it was unlikely. If she moved the cubs even 50m the chances were that nobody would see her or them again. It was plain that Onks remained unconvinced.

“Let’s call Rob for another opinion,” I suggested.

Megan immediately made the call. “Hey Rob,” said Megan. “We’re here at the camp trying to come up with a plan for this leopard.” She put him on speaker. We huddled around the phone and described to Rob what we had seen and our discussion. We went over the pros and cons, including the worst-case scenarios we could think of. In the end, Rob agreed our proposal and possible scenarios that helped explain it were consistent with his summary of the situation. He also described a similar situation in which a leopard had been successfully moved on with some sustained disturbance from a tent at another camp it had taken up residence in. After a confirmation call to Onks’ boss, we were given a green light.

This time we drove to the tent in the interest of caution over concern about a protective mother leopard. I scanned the surrounding bush from behind the windscreen which I had pulled up as a token defence in the otherwise open Land Rover.  Megan began cutting a panel to open the side of the tent with the aim to of making the ‘den’ feel exposed in hopes the mother no longer felt her cubs were safe inside. Hoping we had done the right thing, we left for Dog Camp. Kenosi promised he would intermittently create a disturbance near the ‘den’ with noise and lights during the night, leaving quiet gaps to allow her to fetch and move her cubs. Morning would reveal whether our plan had worked.

Interfering with nature is always stressful. But we had little choice under the circumstances, as leaving the leopards where they were wasn’t going to be acceptable to anybody. A leopard had attacked several people and killed one at a camp in Xakanaxa earlier in the year. If we couldn’t make this leopard move out, the Wildlife Department would likely be compelled to shoot her as a problem animal. Kenosi had intimated as much when he told us that, one way or another, his job was to make sure the “problem” was solved.

We drove back the following morning, a knot in my stomach, and Megan admitting having a sense of nervous dread. Since our professional advice as scientists with expertise in predator behaviour, we were feeling responsible for whatever outcome happened. Blame if anything had gone wrong was not far from our concerns. Megan, perhaps more than me as the senior resident researcher. If the leopard died or was killed, or worse, someone was hurt, we could only imagine how we would feel or what the repercussions might be. But, anyway, we were involved. We gave our best counsel and explained our thoughts. So, now, what would we find?

As we pulled up, we saw the Wildlife Department vehicle parked behind the leopards’ tent. Kenosi, standing beside the truck, waved us over, his expression impossible to read.

“Good news. They’re gone,” he said. I felt a flood of relief. Our plan worked! The bad news, it seemed from the ongoing discussion, was that the leopards’ location was now unknown. But surely this was to be expected.

“This was the best-case scenario,” I emphasised. “She came back. She moved the cubs. Chances are high nobody sees them again. We don’t need to know exactly where she is – just that she’s no longer living in the staff tents.” Kenosi agreed but Megan wanted to check. She climbed through the aperture we had cut in the tent wall and began nosing around inside.

Then we all heard: “Oh s**t! They’re still here.” Sure enough, the cubs had only moved away from the opening we had made and found a dark corner to curl into. It was easy to see how the others had missed them.

“We need to get out of here,” I said, glancing not a little nervously once more at the surrounding bush. “We’re all at risk standing here.” We moved away to take stock. Now, our fear was that we had scared away the mum. We let Rob know the situation and he promised to drive out to the camp as soon as he could get away. All options were back on the table.

I had to leave but knew that Megan and Rob would come up with a plan and deal with the situation with both the leopards and the camp staff safety in mind. Sure enough, the next morning, Megan reported success. After I left, she and Rob had moved the cubs out of the tent and into a box. With the cubs safely outside the remaining structure had quickly been dismantled by the camp staff. The cubs were then left in the open box nearby. Perhaps we should have done this on day one but even our more minor interference had felt excessive at the time.

The result later that evening with Megan and others watching from a distance, saw the mother return. After a nervous moment when she appeared to miss them, the leopardess eventually located, and one at a time picked up and carried her exposed cubs away. She then simply disappeared into the nearby bush, melting away as leopards can. Maybe we will see them again in a few months – a healthy relaxed mum with two growing cubs. It seems unlikely that the cubs will remember much about their unusual start in life or a strange 24 hours when their world was clumsily invaded, but it is an experience I suspect none of the people involved, myself included, will ever forget.

The African wild dog dispersal project is a collaboration between University of Zurich and BPC.

Dispersal is an important process governing the persistence of wild animal populations. Upon reaching sexual maturity, individuals usually disperse from their natal home range to search for potential mates and a suitable territory to settle. By taking individuals away from the natal group, dispersal maintains gene flow, allows rescuing small and isolated groups, and enables the colonization or recolonization of unoccupied habitats. In human-dominated landscapes, however, dispersing animals find it increasingly difficult to freely move between suitable locations. For this reason, the identification and preservation of wildlife corridors has become a task of utmost importance for conservation authorities.

In 2003, the countries of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe have agreed to preserve an unprecedented network of wildlife corridors, connecting 35 already-existing national parks, game reserves and other protected areas. The Kavango-Zambezi Conservation Area (KAZA) spans roughly 520,000 square kilometers, making it the world’s largest transboundary conservation area. But do the boundaries of the KAZA match the dispersal needs of the species it seeks to protect? In a collaborative effort, researchers from the University of Zurich and Botswana Predator Conservation sought to answer this question by shedding light on the dispersal behavior of the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), KAZA’s most mobile, yet most endangered species.

Endangered predator
African wild dogs currently number around 6,000 free-ranging individuals that are distributed across a few remaining populations in southern and eastern Africa. Within these populations, wild dogs form cohesive packs comprising up to 30 individuals that are led by one dominant couple. After reaching sexual maturity, wild dogs disperse in same-sex coalitions to find potential mates and suitable territory to settle. During this journey, wild dogs cover impressive distances of up to 500 km within only a few days.

Wildlife corridors for dispersing wild dogs inside and outside the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier conservation area, the world’s largest transboundary conservation area. Graphic: UZH.

“We wanted to investigate through which habitats dispersing wild dogs preferably move and verify that crucial dispersal corridors are successfully encompassed by the Kavango-Zambezi Conservation Area”, says David Hofmann, first author of the study and PhD student at the University of Zurich. For this purpose, a research team equipped several wild dogs with GPS radio collars. This allowed the researchers to analyse through which habitats dispersers preferably moved and to predict a set of suitable wildlife corridors.

Few Corridors remain unprotected
The results from this analysis suggest that indeed most of the identified wildlife corridors run within the KAZA and that only very few suitable corridors remain outside its borders. Northern Botswana appears to act as a central hub for dispersing individuals that use the region to gain access to more remote locations within the KAZA. Another important corridor connects national parks in Angola and Zambia. “While the corridor still runs through areas that are largely unprotected, the KAZA initiative does intend to place those regions under protection,” says Hofmann. “There’s still room for improvements though, as several smaller dispersal routes remain currently uncovered by the planned protection zones of the KAZA.”

An African wild dog crosses a small canal in northern Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Although the dog depicted here crosses the river with ease, the same does not hold true for larger swamps, rivers and lakes that prove to be nearly insurmountable obstacles for the species. Photo Credit: Dominik Behr.

Not all areas are equally suitable for establishing wildlife corridors. In some countries, dispersers encounter only few obstacles, whereas in countries such as Zambia and Zimbabwe, high population densities and associated activities often prevent successful dispersal. The researchers thus urge that these country-specific differences be considered when implementing the KAZA initiative.

Lions and elephants also stand to benefit
The statistical methods and data employed in this study will not only be of use to decision-makers involved with the KAZA initiative but could also serve to delineate new protection zones or to modify existing ones. Overall, findings of this study emphasize that the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area largely meets the needs of dispersing African wild dogs, thereby making an invaluable contribution to conserving this endangered but charismatic species. “Ultimately, expanding the network of wildlife corridors not only helps African wild dogs; other species that live in the same ecosystem, such as lions, elephants, and cheetahs are also likely to benefit,” says Hofmann.

Literature:
David D. Hofmann, Dominik M. Behr, John W. McNutt, Arpat Ozgul, Gabriele Cozzi.
Bound within boundaries: Do protected areas cover movement corridors of their most mobile, protected species? Journal of Applied Ecology. 7 May 2021. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.13868

Almost 3 hours’ drive from Maun, we arrived at the HEDT office only to learn that the Community Scouts whom I have come to meet are based at a camp about 14 km from the village. Their field base camp, I learned, is situated closer to the buffalo fence in the Habu Community Wildlife Conservancy, a community-led commitment to encourage the recovery of wildlife in a cattle-free part of Habu’s traditional grazing areas. Driving to the camp was an experience in itself as my driver, Ben, one of the Community Scout program coordinators unexpectedly ran into the newly flooded Thaoge River, which in past years flowed through the area past Habu village to Tsau.

The many elephants and impalas on the way added to the excitement and sense of adventure.

We arrived at the Scouts camp just as they had returned from their daily patrols, and Ben and I set up our tents with the help of the Scouts. While preparing our supper, I started a conversation with the Scouts to hear from them what is it they do. Karehepere Daniel, Onneetse Kapwe, and Aaron Xubere explained that they are based at the camp. From there they conduct anti-poaching and data logging patrols on foot, patrols that involve many duties including recording all observations of wildlife and human activities using GPS data loggers that digitally record their observations. They record locations of dead animals that might be related to poaching and report these by radio back to the HEDT office in Habu. From there, their reports are sent to the relevant authorities like the Botswana Defense Force, and the Wildlife Department for further investigation. Another important role they have as Community Scouts is working together with their colleagues, other teams of Scouts who are also in the bush but working as cattle managers, herding, and directing cattle where to graze.

The Scouts teams communicate about which areas to take cattle and specifically about avoiding areas where buffalo or predators have been seen. This coordination between the Scouts in the field aims to reduce human-wildlife conflicts and risks of wildlife linked diseases such as FMD. These same community scouts also have helped with other HEDT development projects. These projects include helping to build better kraals for farmers to curb the problem of predators attacking livestock at night and digging of trenches around boreholes to avert elephants from damaging pipes and water tanks that farmers depend on. All these efforts by the Community Scouts contribute to Habu’s vision and ambition to see their community area develop their homegrown sustainable tourism that is compatible with Habu’s traditional livestock farmers.

Habu Scouts on patrol at baobab camp

Despite challenges like patrolling unarmed on foot and fears of running into poachers or dangerous wild animals, the Habu Scouts are committed to their jobs and understand the importance and value of wildlife and its conservation. They are helping to deliver the Habu community vision, improving the lives of farmers and livestock and coexistence with the area’s natural wildlife.  They are dedicated and would like to continue without hesitation until they get the outcome of the project, hence funds are needed to continue with the project. To find out more about our other human-wildlife conflict mitigation projects work visit the Blog page at Botswana Predator Conservation Program . And please click on the DONATE button to see how you can help.

Goose is a leopard, or rather, was a leopard. I would prefer not to admit that he is probably dead, but I think it’s time to face the facts. The last time I saw him on a camera trap was nearly a year and a half ago. Goose was a very special leopard to all those that have passed through Dog Camp; I am no exception. He has been a constant feature of our study area for over 12 years. He was the most relaxed and habituated animal I have ever known.
Goose entered our study in 2007 in a way that has become a legend here because he was first located cannibalizing Maverick, one of our other study area male leopards. Hence the name Goose (from the movie). Goose quickly became recognized 

My first meeting with Goose in 2015.

as a new dominant male in the core of our study area – dominance he retained for well over 10 years. It is a dangerous and demanding job being top gun; defending your territory against rival males, scent marking day and night as you endlessly patrol, not to mention the rough and questionably playful courtship with resident territorial females. Goose achieved this all with a confidence and ease that only years at the top could account for.
I first met Goose in 2015. I had a healthy fear of leopards born of trips to the bush in my childhood. I was very aware of the power of leopards, and how quickly they can teach you not to trust them. My introduction to Goose shocked me as a lesson in how much an animal can ignore you. After locating his VHF transmitter signal, I managed to catch up with him while he was on a morning patrol. I quickly positioned the land rover ahead of him, trying to second guess his trajectory to get a side photograph of him for my identification purposes. To my surprise, he changed direction and came straight for me in the open vehicle. Fear gripped me as I instinctively ducked down into my foot well, heart pounding, and adrenaline pumping. Goose however, was completely nonplussed. He could not have cared less. He brushed the side of my vehicle as if I were no more than an oddly shaped bush and proceeded to settle down behind the rear tire and groom himself. Feebly, I unfolded out of my hiding spot and peeped over the side of my car, noticing his indifference. He instantly became my favourite.
Searches for Goose were often characterised by a frustration due to his extraordinary indifference to us. We could search a 50m patch for an hour trying to get a visual sighting, zigzagging, reversing, and constantly checking the transmitter signal to convince yourself. Stop, start. Stop, start. Only when the land rover approached to within 2 meters, would Goose sleepily lift his head from under a bush or the tall grass that you had already passed at least 10 times, would you spot him, so well camouflaged until he moved. On one occasion, I had narrowed his signal down to one acacia bush in the middle of a grassland. After circling the bush 3 or 4 times (it was not even that big!) and not seeing him, I turned off the engine to gather my senses and try to make a different plan. I heard a noise to my right and there he was, approaching the rear of my vehicle! He walked up alongside the door of my land rover and stood there looking earnestly around, as if he was looking for whatever it was that I had been trying so hard to find. I have no idea where he had been hiding.

Goose (left) and Gosling sharing some shade.

Over the years we grew to know some of Goose’s probable offspring, and, in particular, one son. This young male was the first male leopard that Goose would tolerate being near. We even saw them sharing a kill once when Gosling was still a subadult. We called him Gosling, naturally. But, as Gosling grew older, their tolerance for each other diminished and we would see them together less frequently, and when they were seen together, there was a lot of impressive deep-throated growling. Although Goose remained tolerant of Gosling, and we never saw them fight, it seemed to us that Gosling was carving out his own territory and much of that was with substantial overlap with Goose’s. We used to joke in the camp, anthropomorphising their father-son relationship: that Goose gave everything to raise his son, but that when the time came, Gosling would let his ambition takeover, and he would strive to remove his father to take over the territory: a contrived narrative straight out of stories about kings of old.
A few years ago, when the batteries in Goose’ transmitter expired, we decided not to renew it, given his age and the risks involved. I thought this would be the end of our regular monitoring of Goose, but I was happily mistaken. I was overjoyed when it turned out we would continue seeing him regularly on one of our camera traps. In fact, through the cameras we could still monitor Goose’s ranging, although not as frequently or in as much detail as when we could track him using telemetry. A few years passed in this way without ever seeing him in the flesh, but I was content knowing he was still out there, ruling his kingdom. But gradually over time, I started to see Gosling more frequently on the cameras, and Goose ‘çaptured’ less. One day late in 2018, we picked up another big adult male leopard on a camera trap we would typically expect to see only Goose or Gosling. We knew this leopard as Thaba, but had never seen him on these camera locations before. Thaba’s presence in Goose/Gosling territory had to be interpreted as a challenge to Goose’s dominance there. And in February 2019 I saw Goose strolling past the camera trap for the last time. He has not been seen since. 

Gosling as an adult in 2020

I still see Gosling, who by now has grown into a formidable male, and whether we were correct in our Shakespearean predictions that Gosling killed Goose, or whether Thaba played a role, we will never know. We do know that Gosling has inherited the majority of Goose’s old territory and the area around the camera traps now appears to be a boundary area, and possibly contested because we now capture both Gosling and Thaba on the same camera trap locations. We continue to monitor the life histories of our study area resident leopards, but for the present time we only do so remotely, gathering what information we can from our array of camera traps and any opportunistic sightings in the field. And although Goose may be gone, his legacy lives on in Gosling as a Top Gun – at least for now.

​Over the past few years, we have equipped dispersing African wild dogs with GPS/Satellite radio collars as part of a collaborative effort between the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and Botswana Predator Conservation (BPC) and supported by the Botswana Department of Wildlife and National parks. The aim of the project is (i) to follow dispersers after emigration from their natal group and to investigate the effect of landscape characteristics on their dispersal distance, time and movements, and (ii) to gather crucial demographic data such as frequency of mortality and reproductive success after they have settled in a new territory.

Recently, an unusually large coalition of eight brothers from a single litter born in 2018 emigrated from their natal pack in the Third Bridge – Budumatau – Xini area of Moremi Game Reserve. Thanks to the GPS data regularly sent to a base station (via the Iridium satellite system), we have been able to follow their movements. After emigration, they covered over 175 km in just five days before hitting the permanent swamp surrounding the Kwedi Concession in the northern side of the Okavango Delta. During the past month they have been stationary in an area of about 180 km² between Vumbura Plains Lodge and Mapula Lodge. But dots on a map represent only a small part of the story… Are the eight brothers still together or have they split? What have they been doing? Have they managed to connect with females and formed a new pack?

Movement trajectory of a dispersing coalition of eight male African wild dogs

Although the collar sends us regular location information, keeping up with the group of dogs over such large areas is almost impossible unless we get help from “the many eyes out there”. Tourists, guides, camp managers, all can help keep track of these wanderers by reporting their sightings to our research team.

No sooner said than done. No sooner had we informed the people at the lodges where they might be seen, we received the first report back: a group of 9 dogs, including a collared dog, had been seen a few kilometres north of Vumbura Plains by the lodge staff. The pictures allowed us to identify five of the original eight males and four females (previously unknown to us in our database). Between the confirmed sighting of only 9 and the dogs identified in the photos, the dispersing 8 brothers appeared to have split into at least two groups with three presumed to have died or gone a separate way. While it is not unusual for dogs to die during dispersal, we could only know if they were still alive if we received more photos with them in them? An answer to that important question arrived just a week later when a second sighting of now 12 dogs was reported to us near Bushman Plains camp. Again, thanks to photos sent to us, we confirmed the three missing brothers were still alive and back with their litter-mates – all identified in the photos among the now 12 dogs. Future sightings will tell if this unusually large new pack of 12 will remain together or if some will split off in the future to start another separate pack.

Why would some undergo the risks of dispersing again? Because typically, only one of each sex among the 8 males and 4 females will be dominant as a pair and produce pups. The others who remain will help raise their  pups but won’t typically mate and produce their own. As an alternative life history decision, some dogs may take on the extra risk and disperse again. Bets are open, but we are betting those three brothers will depart again. Time, and your sightings (!), will tell.

We researchers can and do benefit enormously from reports and sightings, as has been the case with these dogs setting up a new territory in NG12/22/23. In return for those reports and useful photos we will be able to centralize all our population information and piece together the characteristics of Botswana’s endangered African wild dog population and share our knowledge with policy makers, stakeholders, and the tourism industry.

Please, keep sharing your sightings with us, of both collared and non-collared individuals, to help us protect these iconic and endangered African predators.

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Fatal human-wildlife conflict is a growing problem. Losses of livestock to predators severely impact rural livelihoods, and predators become the targets for lethal control when they kill valuable animals. Keeping carnivores away from domestic stock will protect both carnivores and the livelihoods of stock owners, and limiting human-predator conflict in Botswana’s livestock areas would provide 250 000square km of predator habitat, double the size of her protected wildlife areas.

Livestock predation has major impacts on small farmers; this is one of seven calves killed by leopards in three nights at a livestock kraal

To be viable, any conflict mitigation measures must be low-cost, low-tech,and quick and easy to apply. Scent-based repellents offer just such a tool, and research by BPCT’s BioBoundary Program has demonstrated that leopards are repelled by the scent of a chemical from leopard urine. When we released tiny quantities of the chemical, called 3-mercapto-3-methylbutanol (3M3MB for short), near automatic trail cameras, the cameras captured only one leopard video when we expected them to capture approximately 20, and that video showed a leopard being repelled by the scent of 3M3MB.

In a frame from a camera trap video, a female leopard grimaces and turns away from the repellent dispenser just in front of her

At a livestock kraal on a cattle ranch in northern Botswana, camera trapping for four-months without 3M3MB yielded seven records of leopards, seven records of spotted hyaenas, and one record of four African wild dogs, and a calf was taken by a leopard but not recorded on video. Over a further 4.5 months with 3M3MB present, there were no records of leopards, and only one record each of spotted hyaenas and wild dogs, with no losses of calves.

View from a camera trap monitoring a livestock kraal. Repellent dispensers are on both sides of the gate (yellow arrows) and another camera (blue arrow) watches from the other direction 

One of the seven records of leopards at a livestock kraal before 3M3MB repellent was deployed

One of a clan of four spotted hyaenas in a livestock kraal before 3M3MB repellent was deployed

Two African wild dogs out of a pack of four videoed in a livestock kraal before 3M3MB repellent was deployed

At another livestock kraal, a female leopard with a large male cub killed seven calves in three nights at the end of July 2019. 3M3MB repellent was deployed two days later, with camera traps monitoring the surroundings of the kraal. No more calves were lost until the repellent was depleted at the end of August, when one calf was taken. While the repellent was active, the camera traps captured video of a leopard walking away from the kraal after spending nearly 20 minutes looking through the fence at the calves inside. The repellent was renewed on 3 September and although the camera-traps videoed leopards outside the kraal on four occasions, no calves were killed until 14 October when the repellent was depleted again. Repellent was renewed on 25 October and there have been no more losses.

Peter Apps loading 3M3MB repellent dispensers at the kraal where leopards had killed seven calves

Frame from a video of the leopard that killed a calf after the 3M3MB repellent was depleted

Frame from a video of a leopard watching calves through the fence of the kraal while the3M3MB repellent was active

The leopard that was watching the calves leaves the kraal

Frames from four video records of leopards walking away from the kraal without killing calves while the 3M3MB repellent was active

These small-scale trials show clearly that 3M3MB has the potential to reduce leopard attacks on livestock, which are the main reason why farmers employ lethal control against predators, and we plan to continue testing at more kraals. Livestock owners have expressed interest in a pilot-scale roll–out of repellents, and we need funding to expand the testing.