Posted August 4, 2025 in All
At the beginning of 2025, we took the decision to remove some of our leopards off the Reserve, we had estimated we had upwards of 20 leopards on UmPhafa. Leopards are not owned by the Reserve but by the State; when they become too much for a particular area we can intervene and relocate.
Umphafa is 60km2. With a male leopard home range approx 48 km2 and a females 14km2 we knew we would eventually have an issue with the amount of leopard roaming the Reserve, not to say the detrimental effect it was having on the prey species as well as the fact we had recently introduced cheetah.
We built a leopard capture cage and placed it in an area where we knew their were many leopards. We had a request from another Reserve for a female so we knew we could relocate any animal caught.
After just having the bait in the cage for a few days we got a hit, a male cub had been caught in the cage, and Mum was not too far away. We called the local vet who came and assisted with the capture of the Mum and son who were then transported to a Reserve several hours away. East Coast College were with us at the time and had the amazing opportunity of seeing a leopard up close and personal.
The leopard we had caught was called Chui and had been on the Reserve for over 10 years and had already sucessfully reared 4 sets of cubs so we knew she would make an excellent addition to her new Reserve.
Whilst Mum and son are doing well, our plans are in place to hopefully do another successful capture again in the near future.
