Leopard Sightings for January 2011

This month really has been a great month @ Kapama for seeing Leopard. The vast majority of these sightings (18 out of 43) were of a young female Imbilo and her two cubs. They were seen nearly every day and the cubs are now getting older and much more active. The months of patience and the careful approach to these cubs now means that they are far more relaxed than their mother. This makes them much easier to find and to follow. The only drawback is that both the remaining cubs are male so are unlikely to stay past 18 to 24 months of age. Hopefully though the value of this same patience will pay off when Imbali, Dzongeni and Dzongeni’s daughter have their own cubs, as well as Imbilo’s next litter. With luck Dzongeni’s daughter will settle somewhere on the reserve.

There were a number of other leopard sightings around the reserve, which considering the no off road policy for the summer is still an amazing number. Some of these sightings were unfortunately brief though many sightings were stable and a number of vehicles were able to pass through.

Here are some of the leopard photo’s that one of our guests, Rob Overy took.

Mike Kirkman-Senior Ranger, Kapama Karula