A video of a man and his family shooting a leopard after trapping it in a gin trap in the Northern Cape has caused much furore among animal lovers across the country. In the video, a man can be heard asking if he should shoot the big cat as it lays prone in the trap, before proceeding to do so.
The shooter, reported to be a farmer in the area, is allegedly well-known for shooting leopards. He also failed to call authorities in an attempt to rescue the cat.
“He did not notify nature conservation till after we confronted him about killing the leopard,” Landmark Leopard and Predator Project said in a lengthy Facebook post. “At a time when it is scholarly estimated that between 3000 and 5000 leopards remain in South Africa, with some areas sparsely populated, the war on leopards continue.
“In the Western Cape 500 adult leopards remain, in the Eastern Cape 400 and in the Northern Cape it is unknown how many remain.”
According to the page, the same man shot and killed a female leopard in 2014, which was a collard leopard used in research by the organisation.
“This leopard was one of our research leopards in the region, where we had and are still running a conservation project in the area,” Landmark Leopard and Predator Project said.
“We offer compensation for losses where farmers apply ecologically, and ethically acceptable practices and where we research the leopards in the region. In the current case, no attempt was made to capture the cat in a cage or to try to mitigate actions, even as a compensation scheme was offered to [thefarmer] recently when our research and conflict mitigation team met with him.”
Picture: Facebook
