Return of the Leopard. - Panthera

leopard
RETURN OF THE
Are they protected or aren’t
they? Elusive and highly mobile,
the leopards of Phinda in
northern KwaZulu-Natal, South
Africa, pay scant attention to
reserve boundaries and are
consequently at a high risk of
being killed, legally or illegally.
After three years of research
into their predicament, the
Mun-Ya-Wana Leopard Project
was ready to take action and,
together with the local conservation
authority, devised a new
regulatory system that could
safeguard the big cats. Another
two years on and project member
Guy Balme could already
note the results.
TEXT BY GUY BALME
greg du toit
34 AFRICA GEOGRAPHIC • february 2010
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35

N
U
SWAZILAND
Mkhuze Game
Reserve
KwaZulu-Natal
Phinda Private Huddled in the
Game Reserve
front seat of the
open Land Rover,
I could not get
I N D I A N
OCEAN
warm. Cold air
lanced through
• Richards Bay
my jacket and the layers I had
piled on to survive a winter
night of tracking leopards. My
motivation was fading fast. The young female I had
been following since the previous afternoon had
melted into a dense thicket and only the constant
beep of her radio-collar reassured me that she had
not disappeared entirely.
One can stare at dead vegetation for only so long.
Dawn was approaching and a cup of warming coffee
beckoned. As I reached for the ignition, an unexpected
sound stopped my hand. Soft but unmistakable
chirps – between a growl and a mew – were
coming from the thicket. Carefully I repositioned
the vehicle and there, clambering among the branches,
was the smallest leopard cub I had ever seen. Its
spots were barely discernible and it looked no more
than three weeks old. It stumbled onto the ground
and approached the Land Rover one shaky step at a
k
MOZAMBIQUE
iSimangaliso
Wetland Park
time. The pint-sized bundle of fur presented no danger,
but an anxious mother leopard would have been
a different story. Thankfully, a sharp hiss from the
female sent the cub scrambling for cover. Slowly I
backed away and turned for home, elated with the
discovery of a new generation of Zululand leopards.
Such sightings were rare in the early days of the
Mun-Ya-Wana Leopard Project (see ‘Trash or in trouble?’
in Africa Geographic, February 2004). Located in
Phinda Private Game Reserve, the project was started
in 2002 by Luke Hunter, now the executive director
of Panthera, an organisation dedicated to conserving
the world’s wild cats. At the time, Zululand represented
the proverbial Wild West for leopards, which
were targeted by almost every community in the
region: cattle ranchers, trophy hunters and Zulu pastoralists,
as well as poachers who killed them for
traditional uses, from ceremonial dress to folk medicines.
But that was all we knew.
Until then, leopards had been well studied only in a
few protected areas where they were insulated from
human contact, so we had no information on the
consequences of high levels of persecution. If we were
going to tackle those consequences, we would be taking
on everyone in Zululand who had always killed
D. & s. balfour/www.darylbalfour.com
leopards, essentially without restriction. To do this we
would need the support of strong science, so we
launched the most intensive effort to date to understand
the ecology of leopards in a patchwork of protected
and non-protected areas. By using radio-collars
and remotely triggered camera-traps and interviewing
various communities, we gradually built up a picture
of the extent of leopard killing in the region – and
whether the population could withstand it.
Although leopards are protected in Phinda and
several other private and state-run reserves in
KwaZulu-Natal, problems arise when they range into
surrounding livestock farms, game ranches and tribal
authority land. The electrified fencing around most
protected areas does little to slow down the big cats:
they simply glide under the fences or go over them. I
once watched a young male leopard jump from a
standing position onto a 2.5-metre-high fence pole,
balance precariously for a few seconds, and then leap
nimbly down to the other side. Thus, very few leopards
in Zululand are permanently protected, and
almost all are exposed to human persecution at some
time in their lives.
Legally, leopards can only be killed by private individuals
who have either a destruction permit or a
CITES tag issued by the local conservation authority,
Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife (EKZNW). Destruction permits
are granted to remove confirmed ‘problem’
leopards. In principle, a landowner has to prove that
a leopard represents a threat to his safety or livelihood
and that no other, less dire solution exists.
When we first began our study, destruction permits
were routinely awarded based on little evidence and,
even more worryingly, recipients often profited from
them. It is against the law to export a leopard skin
obtained from a destruction permit, but local hunters
will pay up to R20 000 for the opportunity to bag
a cat. Farmers would therefore apply for a permit
and sell the right to shoot the cat to a fellow South
African. A permit would also be issued if a leopard
was preying on wild ungulates. Even when killing
their natural prey, leopards are treated as competitors
by game ranchers – they both harvest the same
resource.
CITES tags are allocated for the legal hunting of
leopards for sport. Of the 150 leopard skins South
Africa is authorised to export every year, between
five and 10 are allocated to KwaZulu-Natal. This
hardly seems excessive for such an adaptable and
widespread species, especially compared to the 50 for
Limpopo Province or the 20 for North West.
However, when we began our work, hunting effort
was unevenly distributed in KwaZulu-Natal: almost
80 per cent of the CITES tags awarded between 2000
and 2005 went to the properties surrounding Phinda
and the adjacent Mkhuze Game Reserve.
ZULULAND REPRESENTED THE PROVERBIAL WILD WEST FOR
LEOPARDS, WHICH WERE TARGETED BY ALMOST EVERY
COMMUNITY IN THE REGION
LEFT A threemonth-old
leopard
cub peers at a vehicle
no more than
30 metres away.
Sightings such as
this were unheard of
in Zululand before
leopard management
policies were
changed in 2005.
BELOW A female
leopard and her cub
survey the landscape
from a lofty perch.
The ability to climb
trees offers young
leopards some protection
from lions
and hyaenas, but is
no safeguard against
adult male leopards.
grant atkinson
36 AFRICA GEOGRAPHIC • february 2010 www.africageographic.com 37

A leopard hauls a
grey duiker up an
acacia tree. Leopards
at Phinda rarely hoist
their kills, probably
because their main
competitors – lions
and spotted hyaenas
– are relatively scarce.
greg du toit
Moreover, leopards were hunted on three game
farms adjacent to Phinda for two successive years
and another for four years running. Hunting the big
cats on the same farm in consecutive years creates
pockets of habitat that are permanently empty of
resident leopards. These vacancies attract others of
the species, particularly dispersing sub-adults,
because of the lack of competition for food and
space. A network of vacuums arose around Phinda
and Mkhuze as more and more cats were drawn from
surrounding areas, and were in turn exposed to
hunting. The legal killing of leopards was compounded
by illegal persecution, which is almost
impossible to police. Leopards were opportunistically
shot, gin-trapped, snared and, worst of all, poisoned.
Three years into the research, our results
painted a bleak picture. Thirteen of the
26 leopards radio-collared in Phinda had
died from a combination of natural and
human-related causes. In addition, we
knew of 10 uncollared leopards that had
been killed on properties adjoining the reserve. The
average mortality rate of the population was higher
than 40 per cent, more than double that for leopards
in similar habitat in the Kruger National Park, where
all deaths were from natural causes. Males were the
worst affected: nearly 55 per cent of males that we
monitored died each year. Not only preferred by trophy
hunters because of their size, male leopards use
large home ranges, covering greater daily distances
than females. This increases their chances of moving
off the reserve into areas where they are vulnerable
to hunters.
REMOVING TOO MANY MALES … CAN LEAD TO ELEVATED
LEVELS OF INFANTICIDE, IN WHICH A NEW MALE ENTERING THE
POPULATION KILLS CUBS SIRED BY THE PREVIOUS MALE
Although trophy hunting is not always automatically
damaging to populations, removing too many
males can induce a cascade of harmful outcomes in
carnivores. In particular, it can lead to elevated
levels of infanticide, in which a new male entering
the population kills cubs sired by the previous
male. This is what happened with the very first litter
I observed in Phinda: the father was shot outside
the reserve and replaced by a new male that killed
his predecessor’s cubs. Infanticide occurs naturally
in leopard populations, but an artificially inflated
turnover of males creates a situation in which
females fail to raise youngsters because of constant
incursions by immigrant males.
Compounding this, females in Phinda gave birth
at a later age and had longer intervals between litters
than was known from stable populations. Even conception
rates appeared to be affected. We knew from
long-term research in the Serengeti that lionesses
display a period of reduced fertility immediately after
a new coalition of males has taken over the pride;
females postpone conception until the threat of
further takeovers has diminished. Female leopards in
Phinda seemed to adopt a similar strategy, and less
than a fifth of the mating bouts we observed were
successful. In the project’s first three years, only
three cubs survived in the Phinda population while
at least 23 leopards died.
Spurred by these figures, in 2005 we began
working with EKZNW to turn things around. On
our recommendation, the process governing the
use of destruction permits was overhauled. Only
the landowner or an EKZNW official can destroy
an offending leopard and the permits can no longer
be sold for profit-making hunts. They are also
no longer awarded for predation on wild herbivores,
which is now treated as an inherent risk of
the game-farming industry. Finally, EKZNW
decreed that relocation would be abandoned as a
management tool to address problems with leopards.
In the past, leopards suspected of killing
livestock were often captured and moved to a
reserve or game ranch committed to ecotourism.
This may resolve the conflict on the affected
farm, but often creates trouble elsewhere, as the
cats seldom remain on the new property and
readily cross to a neighbouring farm and resume
killing livestock.
christian Sperka (2)
ABOVE Female F9
stops to scent-mark
before continuing
her territorial
patrol. These
patrols often take
leopards beyond
the borders of
Phinda into areas
where they are
perceived as pests
or targets for
commercial
trophy hunts.
TOP Field assistant
Tristan Dickerson
moves cautiously
up to a sedated
female leopard.
The Mun-Ya-Wana
Leopard Project
has radio-collared
more than 65 leopards,
resulting in
the most intensive
dataset ever
collected on the
species.
38 AFRICA GEOGRAPHIC • february 2010 www.africageographic.com 39

We also needed to encourage more sustainable
sport hunting of leopards. Once EKZNW had scrutinised
our data, it completely revised the system
that allocated CITES tags. The most significant
change was diluting the intense concentration of
hunting around Phinda. We created five Leopard
Hunting Zones (LHZs), which are allocated across the
species’ entire range in the province. The new system
limits a single CITES tag to each LHZ, allowing
only one leopard to be hunted there. A tag assigned
to an LHZ cannot be used elsewhere, regardless of
the demand for hunts in other zones. The upshot is
that no more than five leopards are hunted each
year in KwaZulu-Natal, and hunting pressure is evenly
distributed. Moreover, each LHZ adjoins a suitably
large protected area that acts as a source population
to replace hunted individuals. The protected area
effectively serves as a biological savings account that
protects the core population from the effects of
hunting while also providing dispersers to neighbouring
areas where hunting is permitted.
This was the first time that an African statutory
authority had taken the results of
scientific research and redesigned its protocols
for hunting and the control of
problem leopards. Nevertheless, it was
only the first half of the process. Our credibility
was on the line unless the radical changes we
had fostered proved to be good for leopards. By the
end of 2007, we had the first signs that the conservation
interventions we introduced were working. In
the first two years following the changes, we recorded
only eight leopard deaths (seven collared and one
uncollared) compared to the 23 deaths prior to 2005.
Correspondingly, the annual mortality rate of the
population plunged from 40 to 13 per cent – close to
that for protected leopard populations elsewhere in
South Africa.
Leopards were not only living longer, they were
also reproducing more effectively. Females gave
birth at a younger age, spent a greater proportion of
their time with dependent cubs, and produced
more litters. Most importantly, cub survival
increased dramatically; in fact, all 14 of the cubs
that we knew were born in Phinda after 2005 survived
to independence. We think this was because
the threat of infanticide dropped as the turnover in
territorial males declined. From an average tenure
of only 32 months prior to 2005, males held onto
territories for longer than 45 months – long enough
for females to raise litters to independence without
the disruption caused by new males continually
moving in.
Perhaps the most conclusive proof of the positive
changes came from the camera-trap surveys we
conducted every second year in Phinda. The most
efficient way to estimate leopard numbers is with
neil whyte
remotely triggered cameras that take photographs
of the cats as they go about their daily lives. Since
leopards have unique coat patterns, individuals can
be identified from photos and this, combined with
powerful ‘capture–recapture’ statistics, generates
highly accurate estimates of abundance. In 2005,
we calculated that leopard density in the reserve
was 7.2 leopards per 100 square kilometres – a quite
respectable number, but only 65 per cent of the
estimate from neighbouring Mkhuze (11.1 leopards
per 100 square kilometres). In 2007, the popu -
lation in Phinda had increased to 9.4 leopards per
100 square kilometres, and by 2009 it was on a par
with that in Mkhuze: 11.2 leopards per 100 square
kilometres. Throughout the study we had monitored
natural variables that affect leopard numbers,
such as prey availability and competition with
other predators, and they had remained static.
Hence, the only explanation was that our intervention
programme was driving the recovery of the
Phinda leopard population.
Our final proof was in the number of leopards
killed by people, both legally and illegally: a drop
from 15 to four. EKZNW’s new strategy for managing
problem leopards had reduced the number of
cats removed, and the overhauled trophy hunting
protocols successfully dispersed the hunting pressure.
We believe the drop in illegal kills – from eight
to two – reflects greater tolerance among landowners
for leopards (as opposed to illegal killing
becoming even more covert than previously). Our
strategy for problem leopards hinged on helping
farmers by providing training and support in alternative
means of protecting their stock from predators,
and by helping to identify where there was a
genuine problem individual; losses declined in all
cases where our recommendations were adopted. In
addition, the more democratic distribution of CITES
WITH INTENSELY LIMITED RESOURCES, WE CAN’T AFFORD
TO PERSIST WITH FEEL-GOOD PROJECTS UNLESS WE CAN
SHOW SUCCESS – OR UNDERSTAND WHY THEY FAIL
tags across the region gave a larger proportion of
landowners the opportunity to host a hunt, and
hence the chance to benefit financially from having
leopards on their land. When we interviewed
farmers on properties surrounding Phinda towards
the end of 2007, most told us they preferred the
new management system to the old.
If the changes become permanent, the future of
leopards in Phinda and Mkhuze is now much brighter.
More than that, our study is one of the few examples
demonstrating that conservation of big cats
does work. We set out to achieve what many conservationists
strive for: to address a threat, reduce the decline
of a population or save a species. But we also
scrutinise our results. With intensely limited resources,
we can’t afford to persist with feel-good projects
unless we can show success – or understand why
they fail. Our project has probably ensured the future
of leopards in KwaZulu-Natal. Just as importantly, by
showing that conservation can succeed, I hope we
have inspired fellow conservationists to prove that
their efforts are working. If we can do that, I believe
that the future of leopards and many other similarly
imperilled species will be far more secure.
For further information about the Mun-Ya-Wana
Leopard Project and other initiatives of Panthera, go to
www.panthera.org. Technical papers related to this article
are available at http://panthera.org/scientific_
publications.html
The author would like to thank &Beyond and EKZNW,
whose assistance in developing the new leopard management
strategy was essential, and the many professional
hunters, game ranch managers, farmers and landowners
who agreed to adopt it in the field.
greg du toit
Above The unique
pattern of spots
above where the
whiskers grow
from the leopard’s
face is used by
researchers to distinguish
individuals.
OPPOSITE A picture
of stealth and
grace. Leopards
in KwaZulu-Natal
have been offered a
new lifeline thanks
to conservation
interventions
im plemented by
the Mun-Ya-Wana
Leopard Project and
Ezemvelo KwaZulu-
Natal Wildlife.
40 AFRICA GEOGRAPHIC • february 2010 www.africageographic.com 41