Not a Good friday

Today started with some very bad news. I received a call this morning, from Niel the on duty manager at Kudu Ranch. Niel let me know that a leopard had been knocked down and killed by a hit and run driver on the main road outside of Kudu Ranch sometime last night.

Not exactly the best way to start Good Friday.

Of-course there is very little that we could do,apart from trying to identify which animal it was and examine the body for our records.

We found that this leopard had two different sets of injuries. The first being the obvious trauma caused by the collision with a vehicle, but the other were recent fight marks. He had been given a very hard time by another leopard and had puncture wounds to his head and abdomen.

The accident occurred as he attempted to cross the main tarmac road, heading for Kudu Ranch and away from Lucky's territory.

What we believe happened was that Lucky (who is a much larger territorial male) fought with him last night and chased him away. Sadly he chose the wrong escape route.

We are going back through our records to see if we can identify him, but we don't recognise him. Initial thoughts are that he may have been a transitory young male.

There is not much more to say. This is one of those depressing moments, which are part of being involved with conservation research.

Written by Will Fox

ILP Manager