Protecting the Big 5 in South Africa

Dear Supporters, 

Our newest carnivore, the female cheetah, has been splendid at being a cheetah. We just created new
spatial maps showing the differences between lion and cheetah core ranges. All which would not be
possible without the use of our telemetry equipment.

Karongwe’s newbie!

A few months ago, Karongwe translocated in a new female cheetah from a neighbouring reserve, bringing us to 4 cheetahs in total. To acclimate her to the new surroundings, we placed her in a boma for about 6 weeks where she could learn the smells and sounds of her new home. She is an extremely important little lady for the whole of the South African cheetah metapopulation, and we are all rooting for her success! With the not-so-long ago bottleneck of the cheetah species, translocations throughout multiple fenced reserves is necessary to diversify the gene pool. We are thrilled to update you that our new girl has been doing tremendously well. She hunts for herself, she protects herself, and she’s making Karongwe her home. Because of your generous help, we can track her daily and take information on her location, how often she feeds and how she manages to stay away from other predators. Learning her movement patterns are essential and it wouldn’t be possible without the telemetry equipment we purchase through this fund. 

Cheetah vs Lion

Along with tracking our female cheetah, we also use telemetry to locate our male cheetah coalition and our lion pride each day. Recently, our science officer has begun to look at spatial maps to see how the cheetahs manage to avoid run-ins with the lions. Our new spatial maps show us how different the core ranges for each species differ. The male cheetah coalition spends most of their time along the fence line and in a more open area of the reserve, whereas the lions spend most of their time near a large dam and close to the river areas. Tracking these animals every morning and afternoon for years to follow can lead us to so much more awesome information like this!

All because of your support of this fund, we are able to learn more about our cheetahs and lions each and every day. We cannot thank you enough.

Love,

The Karongwe team

Links:

• Website

Dear Supporters

Breathe in, breathe out. Where did the last three months go? We have been a busy bunch here at GVI Limpopo. We recently introduced a female cheetah to the reserve and we have kickstarted our large-scale camera trapping project. 

The new girl on the block

Just one week ago, a new female cheetah was released on Karongwe. The species overall are in decline across the world, with the IUCN Red List reporting a staggering 7100 remaining. Fortunately reserves such as Karongwe have joined forces with local conservation bodies and will not watch this species dip into further decline. The successful release of this female and subsequent mating with our resident males will add valuable new genetics to the South African population. 

GVI will continue to monitor this female long after her release to gain valuable information about how she utilises the reserve, the first meeting with the male cheetah coalition and down the line, the success or failure of her litters. 

Camera trapping the spotties

We have received almost half of our sponsored camera traps, with the remainder on their way from the United States. Since their arrival the team have been busy programming and testing them on the reserve, ready for the real deal. Our incredibly clever Science Officer, Kayla, has also created a grid to cover the entire reserve, which details exactly where we need to place each trap in order to avoid bias and to collect accurate data. 

Once the remainder of the traps have arrived, we will deploy 42 cameras out to the reserve within our grid. These traps will be checked weekly in small groups to ensure the project is manageable. We are incredibly excited to start capturing images of the more secretive species, especially our spotted and brown hyena. Ideally, we will soon be able to locate den sites of our hyena, which will be monitored personally by GVI staff and volunteers to collect further behavioural and ecological data. 

Your support of this fund ensures that the GVI Limpopo team is able to continue to be an active presence within this natural space. Thank you, thank you, we are looking forward to bringing you further updates from the field. 

With Love,

The Karongwe team