Pilot Study took place from 19 to 25 June 2010

The first field work session called the Pilot Study took place from the 19th to the 25the of June 2010 and a team of 9 people were involved in this pilot study.

1. Objective of Pilot Study
The main objectives of the pilot study were:

• To determine whether leopards do occur in the Kamonande Nature Reserve
• To determine the number of individual leopards if any are found.
• To determine what other carnivores/predators are resident or occur on the reserve.

The research team consisted of the following people

(left to right):

Sarah White, Ben van den Berg, Elandí van den Berg, Elene van den Berg, Bernice van den Berg, Ester van Schalkwyk, Victoria Zedi, Anton van Logerenberg, Andrew Swartz.

The team stayed with van den Berg's at Chalet 17, and the pilot study covered the complete reserve.

2. The Strategy

2.1    Lay out transects through area (ground truth information gathered)

• Two transects based on habitat preference along either roads or game-paths, according to camera trapping protocol
• GPS points
• Pictures of habitat structure at each camera site
• Keep camera traps at same point for total span of time

2.2   Lay out a route to walk each morning for Carnivora track counts

• Lay out road transects that would take approximately 2 hours to walk and gather data. (working in teams)
• Walk each route at same time each day
• Gather data regarding tracks, scat, sightings etc. with GPS data to indicate locations.

2.3. Collate all the data and images gathered during the pilot study period.

2.4. Enter collected data into data base

2.5. Design and produce preliminary report for reserve use
 
3. The Results

The following outcomes are expected.

3.1 A data base with data collected in a scientific form for creating a scientific report of carnivora presence/absence.

• Of GPS’d camera trap pictures with ID of individual leopard (male/female etc.)
• Of GPS’d track data

3.2 A species list of Carnivora found
3.3 A preliminary pilot report based on scientific data gathered

3.4. A report for the use of data gathered for the reserve owners in a defined format

As can be imagined, a lot of information was gathered during this period and a lot was discovered. Therefore, this blog will be updated with one days information, photos, observations and remarks at a time. There will be a blog post for every day that the pilot project covered.
 
Keep your eye on this blog to read what we discovered and found.