Reading Eagle, USA, 2007

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Hello from Reading: Tracking cats on a conservation mission to Namib...

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http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=73086

12/23/2007

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Hello from Reading: Tracking cats on a conservation mission to Namibia Namibia may not be most people’s first (or second) choice for a holiday, but then this wasn’t a holiday — it was another of my conservation expeditions. Along with 11 other volunteers from Europe and the United States, I joined scientist Harald Forster of Biosphere Expeditions (www.biosphere-expeditions.org) to study Namibian big cats. We were gathering data to help protect endangered leopard and cheetah on the 180-square-kilometer Okomitundu game farm about 100 miles northwest of Windhoek. This is savanna, covered with grass, acacias and thorn trees; lush during the short rainy season but arid and harsh during the rest of the year.

Courtesy of Biosphere Expeditions A cheetah bolts from a box trap after being fitted with a radio collar.

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Hello from Reading, England By Peter Lynch Reading Eagle Correspondent • Peter Lynch is a travel writer who lives in Reading, England. His column appears every other Sunday. Contact him through Lifestyle@readingeagle.com.

Our core research involved tracking leopard and cheetah previously captured and fitted with radio collars, identifying and counting tracks, and recording prey species.

Namibia has the world’s largest population of cheetah, and 90 percent of them live in farming areas. Conflict with humans is a problem as they sometimes kill livestock, but their ecology is poorly understood, which makes conservation difficult.

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Matthias Hammer, the German founder of Biosphere Expeditions, told us, “This is no lazy holiday or soft safari but an important scientific expedition.”

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Hello from Reading: Tracking cats on a conservation mission to Namib...

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http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=73086

Our job was to collect data on population density, distribution, health and ecology for a new conservation strategy. Data is shared with government agencies the Global Cheetah Forum and Africat. After training in identification and the use of scientific equipment I got behind the wheel of a Land Rover (sponsored by Land Rover Ltd.), not a city slicker’s 4WD but one equipped with ladders, winch and eight gears for traversing dry sandy riverbeds and climbing 45-degree hillsides of rock and scree. During one game sample from the back of our Land Rover, my group counted 76 animals including oryx, kudu, hartebeest, wildebeest, warthog, jackal, zebra, springbok, steenbok, mongoose, baboon, snake, eagle and various lizards.

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The highlight was a leopard just sitting on a rock watching us. She was stock still and then, in a blink of an eye, she up and vanished. We found her spoor, and with our bushman tracker we stalked her for a mile and a half but lost her on rocky ground. The next day we took telemetry radio tracking equipment to pinpoint her location. From a high point we took our first bearing and then drove south for a second. Our third pinpointed her exactly. She was hiding somewhere near the top of a rocky outcrop, almost certainly watching us although we couldn’t see her. Suddenly the equipment indicated she was moving fast and then disappeared — she had gone over the top of the hill! Driving around to the other side we again picked up her signal. She was stationary and then again moving swiftly she vanished over the top again. Clearly she had seen enough of people, so we recorded the details and left her in peace. If you want an exotic holiday, a genuine insight into wildlife, want to do something worthwhile with a feel-good factor, then conservation volunteering may be for you.

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http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=73086

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