Petes' blog - A day in the life of a conservation assistant:

Hi my name is Pete and I arrived at INGWE - Leopard Research on the 22^nd August with a couple from London called Steve and Gill. I am currently a student studying Environmental Biology and came across Ingwe Leopard Research one day when I was searching for something to do for the summer. I decided that this place looked perfect for me, I get to go back to South Africa and I get to be involved in real life scientific research that is actually making a difference and I wasn’t disappointed when I arrived. On the first day we were chucked straight in the deep end. Dairen Simpson and a film crew were here and we were going out tracking leopard to trap and fit tracking collars to that will allow the team here to monitor their movement more accurately.

Dairen is one of the world’s top animal trappers and although the process sounds harmful he has over 25 years experience using this method and has never injured any animal that he has caught. He has worked all over the world trapping Jaguar in the Amazon, Bears in the USA and Lions, Leopards and Hyena in Africa to name just a few. Being able to work alongside Dairen, Tara and the rest of the Ingwe and Black Leopard staff is such a fantastic experience. They are all so knowledgeable and they all have time for every question that I have, no matter what it may be.

Life here since arriving has been pretty hectic trying to get all of the traps down on the ground and my skills in the bush are growing by the day. Within two days of arriving I had learnt what leopard spore and scat looked like and how to distinguish them from partial Baboon prints by looking at what else was around the spore. We have also been recording the spore of other predators that are using the reserve such as Civet, Genet and Mongoose. The next challenge is to find the Hyena tracks that Tara found the other day and see if it is still on the reserve and hopefully with our regular bush walks we will find out where they have been walking and what direction they are heading.  

It has been non-stop but I have loved every minute of it so far, even waking up every two hours to see if we had caught a leopard didn’t seem so bad with the anticipation of what could be there. But despite the occasional sleepless night I’m looking forward to the rest of my time here and learning as much as possible from Tara, Dylan and the rest of the Ingwe team, plus I get to enjoy the South African bush in a way most tourists don’t.