Leopard capture - Welgevonden Game Reserve

UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA
CENTRE FOR WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT
WELGEVONDEN PRIVATE GAME RESERVE
Report 8
July 2010
Eight progress report:
Leopard capture
Centre for Wildlife
Management
1) Introduction
Two of the main objectives of the leopard research at Welgevonden were to determine
Inside this issue: leopard home range sizes and prey selection. To achieve this six leopards needed to be
captured and collared. Capturing leopards without injuries is a challenge, expensive and
requires many man hours. While cage trapping is the most common method used in
leopard capture, capture injuries to leopards, and other non target animals, are very com1
Introduction
mon. Therefore, alternate methods that were potentially less damaging to the leopards,
and other carnivores, and possibly more cost effective, were investigated.
Current methods 1-3
Setup of traps
Results
4
5-8
2) Different capture methods
There are generally three different methods used to capture leopards, these include free
darting, cage trapping and foot snares. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages
that will be discussed below.
Leopard Research:
Progress report is prepared by Lourens Swanepoel. Lourens is a PhD
student from the University of Pretoria.
Phone: 082 817 4679
E-mail:
[email protected]
2.1) Free darting
Free darting is where a leopard is darted from a vehicle, hide or opportunistically. Normally
a bait is set and monitored until a leopard starts feeding on the bait. The bait is then approached by the capture person and the leopard is darted from a vehicle.
Advantages:

Selective, only leopards will be darted;
Disadvantages:

Dangerous to the animals, a darted animal may fall from tree and
injure itself. This can be reduced by using drugs to calm the leopard
while feeding on the bait;

Dangerous to capture team, a darted animal may run off, particularly if the tranquilliser is only partially injected. This increases the
risk of injury to the capture team as the leopards needs to be
tracked and located (normally at night). The partially injected drug
may also increase the vulnerability of the leopard to attack from
other animals;

Good marksmen, the leopard will normally be darted from about 30
m at night;

Leopards must be accustomed to vehicles and humans, this is
rarely the case;

Time consuming because darting can only start when the leopard
starts to feed on bait.
In summary, although this method may initially sound great there are several serious associated risk factors. The most important being that a leopard may be partially anesthetized which may cause them to flee resulting in the necessity of searching for it. Given the
reputation of leopards this is not something one wants to do at night. A charge by one of
these animals would most probably result in a dead or very sore leopard or trapper. This is
1 not something to experiment with.
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2.2) Cage trapping
This method is the oldest and most common method used to capture leopards. A metal cage with a sliding door set
on a trigger mechanism that is triggered either using a bait or a foot plate, which results in the trap door falling
closed.
Advantages:

Easy and can be set up by anyone;

By-catch can be released without anesthesia;

Non target species can be avoided by setting cage in trees, or increasing foot plate strength or
using large chunks of bait;

Require only simple darting equipment (blow pipe, jab stick, hand injection).

Tooth damage to captured carnivores can be expected, especially if cages are not checked
frequently;

Cages are big, intrusive structures and leopards can be wary of this, especially if they are persecuted by people;

Takes a lot of man power to set up each cage therefore can only be set up next to roads and
are not easily moved;

Non selective in most cases;

Expensive to build proper cages;

Not very effective and requires many trapping days
Disadvantages:
Trapped carnivores scratch at the floor of cage traps in their
attempts to escape, frequently resulting in damaged foot pads
and claws. Leopards and brown hyenas in particular bite the
cage and are likely to break some teeth Releasing a carnivore
with damaged teeth obviously puts the animal at a disadvantage possibly reducing its hunting success. Therefore all effort
must be put in place to prevent these injuries happing to all captured carnivores.
A set cage for leopards
Cage set in tree to avoid
hyenas and lions, this however, can be even more intrusive for leopards and they
don't enter the cages, making
it not very effective
Leopard cages a big and heavy, it is
therefore quite difficult to set up and
move around the reserve
Above two pictures show how wary leopards are when they enter a cage. This male
was caught near Madikwe. He sniffed the cage for a long period before he entered the
cage. The only reason we caught this male was because we the leopards own kill as
bait. With a foot snare he would have been caught just by approaching the bait, increasing the changes of capture
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2.3) Foot snares
Foot snares have been used extensively in the USA, UK and Sweden for capture of coyotes, bobcats, mountain lion,
bears, red foxes, wolves and various other animals. Recently (2001), Darien Simpson, a professional trapper from
California, made some adjustments and refinements in foot snares which he used to catch lions quite successfully.
He has since use this method to capture various felid and canid species catching carnivores for a host of researchers’ world wide. We were fortunate enough to have Darien’s services for 6 weeks were he caught some leopards for
the project.
Advantages: (taken from Laurence Frank; Trapping methods for
Disadvantages:
lions)






Very safe for the animals;
Very easily transported;
Highly efficient;
No more that 2 people required to set traps;
Cheap to make;
Effective for wary leopards.




Large non target species need to be darted;
Selective only up to a certain size;
Needs a well trained person to set traps;
Negative perception among the public, due to the
use of the word ‘snare’ in the name.
Bait is used to attract leopard to the site.
The target is then guided, with the aid of
some sticks, to step into the snare. Alternatively, a blind set can be used (below) where
no guiding sticks are used. Another approach (below left) is to use a pen set,
where bait is set in a tree and a ‘pen’ is used
to guide leopard to the trap.
F
E
A foot snare setup consists of a snare loop
that rests on a thrower (A), grounded at (B),
which is connected via a swivel and shock absorber (at C) to an anchor (D). At Welgevonden we used a 4 way cross stake to anchor
the leopards to the ground, using a tree only
as a secondary anchor. A sponge (E) is
placed under the trigger (F) that fires the
thrower. The ‘snare’ locks in place at a certain
size with a simple piece of angle iron; this
makes it possible for small animals to escape
without injuries. The trigger can also be set a
different pressure ratings (Darien used 2 kg for
Welgevonden) which would also allow small
non targets to cross device without triggering it
(figure taken from Franke et al 2003)
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3.2) Foot snares: Setup and considerations for captured animals
Six leopards were identified (3 Males & 3 Females) that could be fitted with GPS collars. The camera trapping pictures, tracks and scats were used to identify areas frequented by these leopards thereby determining the possible
trap sites. Leopards tend to use the existing road network, which made finding sites difficult. The disturbance from
vehicles as well as the fact that it is, potentially, very stressful for a captured animal to be approached by vehicles,
especially if spotlights are used. This increased stress could possibly lead to an increased chance for capture injuries, something that we want to keep as low as possible. The placing baits some distance away from the roads was
an alternative, however, leopards do not appear be that interested if the bait is too far (20m) away from their travel
path. This was again observed during this period when leopard tracks were found on the road, but the bait nearby
was not investigated. Therefore some of the baits were placed next to the roads. To counter the effect of vehicles
were only set after sundown and deactivated early in the mornings. This was also done to prevent capturing warthogs. Some of these traps near the roads were moved when hyenas were caught and stressed by game drive vehicles; luckily no brown hyenas sustained any serious injuries.
Airstrip Female
Shambala Male
Izingwe Female & sub adult
Jackal Male
51 Female
Fig tree Male
Map above shows where target leopards were on the reserve, also figures on right show the different individuals we wanted to
capture. We therefore place traps near the fig tree plains area and kudu kloof area.
Map on right show were the
different collared leopards
were captured. They were
captured remarkably close to
the predicated areas.
Trap site in kudu kloof
where the Izingwe female
were caught. The trap was
about 7 m from the road
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3.2) Results: Capture success
During a period of 6 weeks 17 different trap sites were used, but at any given time an average of 7 traps would have
been in operation. This was done to minimise the time trapped animals remains in the trap, especially if multiple
catches occurred on the same day. During 265 trap days 5 leopard were captured (53 trap days/capture), 13 brown
hyaena captured (20 trap days/capture), one lion and one warthog. This result is in stark contrast to our cage trapping effort where no captures during 240 trapping days (750 trap days if we include bait sites) were made. The first 8
brown hyenas were all captured within the first 3 weeks. The capture rate decreased when the baits were placed in
trees and away from the roads as opposed to being on the ground close to the roads. A similar trend was observed
for the leopards. Unfortunately there is no way to reduce the probability of brown hyenas capture at leopard sets,
because they use the same road network and hyenas have a keen sense of smell. It was however, observed that
after being caught brown hyenas changed their behaviour at trap sites and either avoided the traps all together or
‘jumped’ over the sticks to reach the bait (seen from video clips taken by camera traps).
Graph showing the number of trap days needed to capture a leopard for
cage and foot snares
300
Leopards
Brow n hyaena
Nr of trap days/capture
250
240*
200
150
150
130
100
50
53
20
0
Welgevonden:
Cage traps
(N=240)
Welgevonden: Waterberg game Madikw e game
Foot snares
ranches
ranches
(N=265)
(N=130)
(N=150)
The increased success with the foot snares
also meant a reduction in costs and time
spent capturing animals. With cage trapping only two traps were used over a period of 4 months. Cages needed to be
checked twice, at midnight and in the mornings, in an attempt to limit the time the animal spent in the cage thereby attempting to
limit the injuries that could be sustained by
the leopards once caught. A VHF collar
attached to the trap door was used to monitor if the cage trap had been sprung. All the
setting and checking resulted in about
100km being driven per day over a period
of over 4 months. This resulted in a substantial fuel bill. Foot snares are therefore
not just more effective in capture rate, resulting in fewer injuries but they are also
more cost effective.
Value in parenthesis denotes nr of trap days (nr traps X nr of days active)
*Cage trapping from October 2009 to January 2010-no leopards were captured
Waterberg game ranches taken from Swanepoel 2008
Madikwe game ranch, personal observation (Lourens Swanepoel 2007)
1
2
3
Series of images showing how brown hyenas changed their behaviour around trap sites once caught. Hyaena arrives at set (1)
and looks at guiding sticks (arrow), then (2) ‘jumps’ over sticks and trap (arrow) and runs off without being captured (3)
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4) Leopard collaring, release and health status
No serious injuries to any of the captured animals were observed, except for localised edema on the captured foot of
some of the animals despite the video footage showing the leopards pulling on the anchor cable during most of the
time caught. The anchors have a ‘shock absorber’ which greatly reduce the stress and injury potential because it
allows movement around anchor (Logan et al 1998). From the video footage it was observed that the leopards
chewed at the cable, however subsequent investigation of the captured leopards’ teeth showed no damage. The
same was observed for all the animals caught including the non-target species. This is outstanding given the number
of captures. Drugged leopards were left in a recovery crate until drugs were completely metabolised and leopard
fully awake before release. This was done to make sure leopards were not attacked by other animals while recovering in the veld. Three of the identified leopards were caught and collared, which is a quite an achievement given the
fact that the Izingwe female has one cub and the Airstrip Female has two cubs and no cubs were caught. The capture of the Shambala Male was hoped for, but not anticipated, and he became the first trap “victim”. This was a bonus because the old collar was getting to be tight around his neck. He now sports a new state of the art op off collar
which made a lot of the work worthwhile. All leopards were fitted with GPS/GSM drop off collars (see report 6).
Picture on left is the teeth of the Shambala male, right the
Izingwe Female. Both sets of teeth show no damage whatsoever and they are in perfect condition. This is quite important as teeth breakage is one of the most common injuries to
captured leopards. We were therefore very pleased with the
outcome of this method
Picture on left is the capture leg of the Shambala male, right the
Izingwe Female. Both legs only have some localised edema, nothing serious. The swelling subsided to nothing by the time these
animals were released.
GPS collar fitted to the Izingwe female
Carrying the Shambala male to a work space
Darien taken a blood sample while
I fit the GPS collar to the Izingwe
female
Shambala male being loaded
into the recovery crate
Working on the Shambala male
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Airstrip female being released from the recovery crate, it can be
seen that she is fully awake and aware about the people in the
vicinity
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5) Results: Movement of collared leopards
After release of the collared leopards researchers eagerly awaited the location data to download via the GSM network. Data is downloaded on a regular basis when the leopards are in an area with GSM coverage. Fortunately leopards climb mountains and are therefore often in GSM signal. The Shambala male collar has downloaded 426 GPS
locations, Izingwe female 435 locations and the Airstrip female 239 locations. All the leopards have been making
kills, suggesting that they have completely recovered from capture and sustained no injuries that affected their hunting.
Leopard
Home range size
(MCP) Km²
Shambala male
224
Izingwe female
41
Airstrip female
27
The Shambala male covers the entire reserve, hence his large home range. It is not
known if this male is a territorial male or
not. This will only be known when some of
the other males are collared.
The females home ranges are quite a lot
smaller that for the game farms areas.
However, data presented here is only for
the first month and it might change in future. The Airstrip female uses the area
around Fig tree while the Izingwe female
uses the area around Kudu Kloof toward
the Sterkstroom.
When clusters of GPS points are observed
after downloads a researcher will visit that
area and try and determine what caused
these clusters. On most occasions these
indicate a kill. A few GPS clusters from the
Shambala male were investigated and a
bushpig kill, near the Bushpig-lapa, was
located. A kill made by the Izingwe female
near site 45 (Klipspringer) was also located.
A further 3 leopards need to be capture
and it is hoped to get Darien back for the
month of August. This all depends on funding.
Kill found at a GPS cluster from
the Izingwe female. This kill was
made near site 45
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Izingwe female
This female was always known as 44_F due to
the fact that she was first seen near site 44.
Since then she has become familiar and over 30
pictures of her have been taken by the camera
traps and tourists.
In recognition of the funding received for this
project from Trisha Wilson (Izingwe lodge, site
45) this female was renamed the Izingwe female.
References:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Frank, L., Simpson, D. & Woodroffe, R. 2003. Foot snares: An effective method for capturing African lions.
Wildlife Society Bulletin 2003, 31(1):309–314
Frank, L. 2001. Appendix 1: Trapping lions. A WildCRU document. (www.http://www.catsg.org/catsglib/index.php)
Logan, K. A., Sweanor, L. L., Smith, J. F., and Hornocker, M. G. 1998. Capturing pumas with foot-hold snares.
Manuscript. (www.http://www.catsg.org/catsglib/index.php)
Swanepoel, L. 2008. Ecology of leopards (Panthera pardus) on selected game ranches in the Waterberg, Limpopo. MSc thesis, University of Pretoria
Compliance with legislation:
We conducted the research under University of Pretoria Animal Use and Care Committee ethics clearance protocol A022-06 with
all its amendments and Limpopo provincial government leopard permit capture number CPM-004-00006
Acknowledgements
This project is made possible by funding from Trisha Wilson.
The capture of the leopards was made possible with help from the Ingwe Leopard Project (ILP) and Darien Simpson
(www.wildlifecaptureinternational.com). Anton van Loggerenberg (ILP) and Kirsten Hill (ILP volunteer) helped with the setup and
monitoring of trapping sites. David Powrie (Welgevonden Private Game Reserve) kindly assisted in providing bait on selected
days. David and André Burger (both Welgevonden Private Game Reserve) also assisted in the collaring of leopards. My wife Corrie prepared meals; we would also like to thank Sibusiso Vilane for letting us share his home during this period.
Capture team: From left to right
Albert with Anton, Lourens, Darien and Kirsten
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