Spot, snap and share your sightings of cheetahs and leopards in Etosha

Join the citizen science survey!

EXPLORE NAMIBIA’S WILD HEART: ETOSHA NATIONAL PARK

Etosha National Park is a unique gem in Africa, distinguished by its 4,730 km² salt pan, so immense that it is visible from space. Despite its dry landscape, the park boasts abundant wildlife that gathers around its waterholes, which all but guarantees game sightings for visitors. Additionally, Etosha stands out as one of the most accessible wildlife viewing locations in Namibia and southern Africa, making it a prime destination for wildlife enthusiasts. Etosha hosts an almost complete guild of large carnivores, which are keystone species that can influence the entire food web and are highly valuable for tourism.

Effective wildlife conservation and management usually starts with knowing the population sizes of the species of interest. Approximately 6,600 cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) remain globally, highlighting this iconic species’ critical conservation status. In contrast, population estimates for leopards (Panthera pardus) have very wide confidence intervals, leading to considerable uncertainty around their actual numbers. In Etosha, the population estimates for cheetahs and leopards remain a mystery, as comprehensive studies have yet to be conducted on these two species. This gap underscores the urgent need for targeted research and conservation efforts to ensure the survival of these majestic predators in their natural habitats.

JOIN THE ADVENTURE: ETOSHA’S ONGOING CITIZEN SCIENCE SURVEY

Reliable carnivore population estimates and what affects these numbers are still unknown in Namibia’s flagship Etosha National Park. However, this information is crucial for effectively managing and conserving these keystone species, ensuring their continued presence in this vital ecosystem. This recognition led the members of the Greater Etosha Carnivore Programme – a collaboration between Ongava Research Centre, the Etosha Ecological Institute and other national and international collaborators – to address this knowledge gap and conduct large-scale surveys in the park in 2024.

Carnivores are notoriously difficult to count due to their wide-ranging behaviours, nocturnal habits, elusive nature and low densities. Fortunately, methods to monitor population sizes have become relatively well developed. For instance, playback surveys are used to estimate the numbers of social and vocal species such as spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) and lions (Panthera leo). Camera traps are ideal for species with unique coat patterns, enabling individual identification based on photographic evidence. However, due to the differing behaviours of leopards and cheetahs, two separate sampling designs of camera traps deployment would be necessary for reliable population size estimates of these two species. Consequently, a citizen science survey is the most practical approach, allowing for the collection of images for individual identification of both species over a long period and across the whole park, yielding useful population estimates.

A citizen science survey was therefore launched on 1 June 2024 and will continue until the end of May 2025. This survey is led by Ongava Research Centre’s 24-year-old master’s student, Mburaje Keja, in collaboration with Namibia University of Science and Technology. Mburaje aims to apply individual identification techniques to the photographs shared by Etosha’s visitors to produce the first population size estimates for these two species. This groundbreaking initiative seeks to fill a critical knowledge gap and enhance conservation efforts for cheetahs and leopards in the region.

At key locations in the park, posters and flyers containing all the essential information encourage visitors to share their sightings by filing an online form, providing details such as the date and location of sightings, number of individuals in a group and email address (no spamming, promise!). They will then receive an email from Mburaje inviting them to share their photographs. These images will be processed using a specialised artificial intelligence (AI) platform called the African Carnivore Wildbook. This initiative empowers citizen scientists to participate actively in conservation efforts and to enhance the collective understanding and protection of wildlife in the park.

FROM PICTURES TO INDIVIDUALS AND POPULATION SIZE

Dr Stéphanie Périquet-Pearce and Prof. Morgan Hauptfleisch will supervise Mburaje’s project, which is supported by the Ongava Research Centre, the University of Georgia in the USA and the Namibian Chamber of Environment.

Once photographs and the required information have been received, Mburaje will upload them to the African Carnivore Wildbook, a pivotal tool for individual identification of carnivores. This online platform is a groundbreaking conservation tool, harnessing AI’s power to identify similar patterns on animal coats and return a list of potential matches.

For instance, consider the leopard image below: the picture on the right displays the unknown animal, while the image on the left shows one of the AI platform’s suggested matches. The areas of similar coat patterns are highlighted as a heat map, helping in the decision-making process to confirm whether it is the same individual. If none of the suggested animals matches, the platform allows the user to create a new individual. What used to take hours of staring at a series of images and trying to find a match now takes only a few minutes. This streamlined process dramatically improves the efficiency and accuracy of individual identification.

Once individuals are identified on the images, we can build capture histories for each individual that summarise where and when it was recorded during the survey. From there, the data will be analysed in a capture-recapture statistical framework, which will generate population estimates and their confidence intervals. This project will also establish a comprehensive database of individuals from the two species, which will provide a baseline for future surveys and conservation efforts.

WHAT IS IN IT FOR YOU?

First of all, by sharing their images with us, citizen scientists help us in our mission to study and protect these enigmatic keystone species. On top of that, they stand a chance to win a two-night stay for two at Anderssons at Ongava on the Ongava Game Reserve, located on the southern boundary of Etosha National Park. The winner will enjoy Anderssons at Ongava’s complete luxury offering, including unparalleled game-viewing opportunities, whether from an underground hide, the pool or the comfort of their accommodation.

And for the icing on the cake, this also happens to be where the Ongava Research Centre is located. Hence, the winner will be invited to meet the researchers conducting this survey firsthand, as well as the rest of our team, and learn more about our mission and projects.

The winner will be randomly drawn from the participants who submitted identifiable images. Each submission will count as one entry, meaning the more observations you submit, the higher your chance of winning. The winner will be announced on 1 March 2026.

- Mburaje Keja & Stéphanie Périquet-Pearce

First published in the Spring 2024 issue of Travel Namibia magazine. Subscribe to Travel Namibia here: www.travelnewsnamibia.zinioapps.com/shop

Do not wait any longer to plan your trip to Etosha – set out on the search for spotted cats! Join our effort to learn more about cheetahs and leopards and share your photographs from Etosha using the QR code.

IMAGE COPYRIGHT AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DISCLAIMER: By submitting your images to this survey, you allow Ongava Research Centre to use them solely to identify individual cheetahs and leopards and give them the intellectual property of the data extracted from these images. Submitted images will not be used for any commercial purpose. The copyright and property of images remain entirely with the person submitting them. If the Ongava Research Centre (or collaborators) wishes to use the images to display to the public for research/illustration purposes, the person who submitted the image will be contacted, permission will be asked, and owner copyright will be clearly displayed on the image.