Wildlife Ecology Lab 3/ His project is partnered with the Cape Leopard Trust (CLT) and Panthera. Over the next few weeks, we'll be following Silindokuhle on his journey to research leopards in an area where little is known about their distribution or threats. Stay tuned! #leopard #monitoring

On the ground, there was evidence of #leopard presence—like spoor, droppings, or tree clawing—but it wasn't abundant. Local knowledge and experience from reserve managers and field guides were crucial in narrowing down the sites for camera placement.

Some great insights here into Silindokuhle's camera trap surveys in the Eastern Cape! 🐆📸🐾🇿🇦 All the amazing things you get to do as part of a PhD! 🤩

Excited to be heading to Kruger National Park to see how the Wildlife Ecology Lab Kruger #lion survey is progressing! 🤩🦁📸 Funded by Lion Recovery Fund, the study will provide the first robust population estimate for the southern & central Kruger lion population! 🇿🇦🦁

Not sure all of the #lions on our Kruger National Park survey appreciate having their photos taken! 😆🦁📸 📸 Heath Curry/Julia Morris

Night drives give us the opportunity to get excellent ID photos! 🦁📸 Sometimes it can be hard to get ID shots during the day, when lions are often sleeping or in dense bush! At night, lions often use the roads for easy travelling... Or for more sleeping on the warm tarmac! 🦁💤

Our 🦁 survey in Kruger is in full swing & both teams are getting incredible sightings & an ever growing database of individuals! 🦁🦁🦁 We have two teams regularly moving between rest camps to maximise our coverage of the park & the no. of individuals sighted + recaptured! 🦁📸

Individually identifying lions can be tricky sometimes... But that's no an issue with Casper, the famous white lion of Kruger! 🦁 Our team in Satara have had some fantastic sightings of Casper & there's no chance of mistaken identity with him! 😆 📸 Rebecca Stols/Charlize Jones

Awesome work, Rudi! 🤩🇧🇷

Congratulations to Alice Bernard on this awesome publication! 🤩 Using camera traps and local ecological knowledge, Alice's study investigated how life-history traits are associated with the persistence of mammal species in human-dominated habitats in the Garden Route! 📸🐾

Excited to be attending the inaugural Snare Mitigation Symposium hosted by Cape Leopard Trust (CLT) Tomorrow I'll be presenting our work (Cornelia Warrer Elodie Briefer Damaris Riedner) using citizen science data to identify snare hotspots in Kruger NP 🦁🐆🐾

It was great to have Nic Elliot from Lion Recovery Fund and Arjun Gopalaswamy join us in Kruger to share their insights and advice while we finish up our lion survey of southern Kruger! 🦁🐾 A couple of weeks left on our survey and some great data coming in! 🦁📸