From our working holiday volunteering with leopards, caracals and Cape biodiversity in South Africa

Our surveys are up and running. And our volunteer team have been deployed in all directions of the compass.

The first array of small mammal trapping has now been completed and all traps moved to a ‘new’ location. This is one we also surveyed in 2015, which too has recently been burnt. The charcoal-striped clothing at the end of each survey is a clear reminder. Hopefully the results will give further insight into how the small mammal responds to fire. These mammals are a vital component of a leopard’s diet!

Talking of which, additional camera traps have also been established at Blue Hill, Welbedacht and the Nuwekloof pass, in the Baviaanskloof. The latter took Peter and yours truly, twice as long as expected to deploy – taking a whole day to deploy four cameras. I think we only got lost three times, pushed the 4WD to its limits and managed to scale one dry waterfall. All worth the effort as the cameras will be left in situ for 45 days. Hopefully they will be less effort to retrieve!

Completing any survey in this part of the world requires some level of effort. Alan, Karin and John managed to cover some 600kms (with just one puncture) in one day, in order to complete bird surveys in the Karoo – supporting a wider study with BirdLife South Africa.

Closer to home, the team have also been establishing vegetation monitoring plots at Blue Hill. These will assist an ongoing study on the Honey Bush – indigenous and endemic plants of the Fynbos biome in South Africa, cultivated and harvested for tea production. Most tea currently comes from wild harvested populations. The plots (which will receive different harvest treatments) will hopefully improve our understanding the impact of wild harvesting.

The plots (marked with metal stakes) all need to be labelled – metal tags are the best option to survive the harsh conditions. Turns out aluminium drinks cans (e.g. beer) provide ideal raw material for the required tags. Our Australian and Swedish citizen scientists were more than happy to drink for conservation – obviously in moderation – well enough to make 300 tags!

In amongst all of this we have also been assisting surveys of Cape Rockjumpers – a passerine bird restricted to the Fynbos biome, and advancing our bats surveys. We’ll save the details on those until the next blog…