Leopard sightings are a riveting experience. Whether you’ve caught the swish of a tail in tall grass, spotted a silhouette sleeping in a shady tree or had the luck of one cross in front of you car while in the bush: nothing holds a candle to a leopard.
In the Western Cape, the Cape Leopard Trust (CLT) have kept us at home on the edge of our seats with updates on leopard sightings. Sightings of these big cats across conservancies, farms and national parks have been caught on camera traps.
The sightings however are not necessarily a result of lockdown and a decrease in human activity. Jeannie Hayward from CLT explained: ‘Many people still do not realise that there are wild leopards living free and unfenced in almost all of the mountainous regions of the Western Cape – and that they have been there since long before lockdown – even long before human settlement of the Cape Province.’
‘Leopards in the Cape mountains are notoriously elusive and shy of people, and the best way to study them is by using remote-sensing field cameras. It’s not unusual to get images of leopards from the mountain slopes above Boland and Overstrand towns like Paarl, Stellenbosch, Grabouw, Gordon’s Bay and Kleinmond, yet so many people are still surprised to find out that they are there.’
Here is a round up of the reported sightings over the past few weeks.
A mother leopard and her two cubs spotted along the Garden Route
A leopard was spotted near the Uitkyk Pass close to Algeria in the Cederberg Wilderness Area
Cape leopard recorded in Walker Bay Fynbos Conservancy
The Cape Leopard Trust recently shared footage of a dominant female leopard, called Lumka, that was recorded on the Walker Bay Fynbos Conservancy (WBFC) camera traps over a long preceding period.
Image: Unsplash
