Appreciation post

This project has challenged me in many ways so far, not least because I took it on so late in the year. I feel under constant time pressure with so much to catch up on and get done. Thankfully, I have a team of wonderful student volunteers who are passionate about carnivore biology and conservation! They have helped so much with processing my samples in their breaks between lectures and practicals, fitting it all into their busy schedules. So thanks guys!

The people who have helped me out so far are: Alveena Aziz, Caton Schutte, Clara Steyn, Dayna Hegarty, Kaelin Stemmet, Katherine Chaplin, Kyra McKellar, Lindsay Powell, Megan Pockalny, Michelle Pretorius, Shakirah Rylan, Tara van Ryneveld and Vivienne Coetzee. Thanks also go to some of the UCP interns who have become involved.

Gabi Leighton

SAWMA symposium 2016

I was fortunate enough to attend the annual South African Wildlife Management Association symposium in Tzaneen, Limpopo last month.

I presented some of the preliminary findings on the Cape Town caracals’ diet, focusing on the differences between two methods (kills found at GPS clusters and scat). We had to make a poster and also give a 5 minute speed-presentation of our work.

This was a really valuable few days of interesting talks and people. Very glad that I went and was super pleased to win the prize for the best student poster!

Preview of the poster I presented at the symposium

Preview of the poster I presented at the symposium

I think the next symposium will be in the Western Cape, so hopefully I can go again, and this time do a longer talk about my work!

Gabi Leighton

Caracal diet field trips

I was lucky enough to join in on some field work action earlier this year… This involves setting traps to catch the cats (much trickier than it sounds!) and investigating GPS clusters (i.e. points where the cats have been hanging out for a while) to find evidence of kills and scat, which I’m using for my diet analysis.

No such thing as a free caracal lunch

This is just a brief introduction to the caracal diet aspect of the Urban Caracal Project, which will also be documented here.

I’m an MSc Biological Sciences student in my first year of study at the University of Cape Town. My research aim is to investigate the diet of caracal (aka “rooikat”) living and hunting in the urban spaces of Cape Town, South Africa. These elusive yet adaptable medium-sized cats have managed to persist in a city with an increasingly hardening urban edge; using greenbelts, empty land as well as natural areas. The latter is mostly land forming part of the Table Mountain National Park (TMNP).

Most citizens of Cape Town are surprised to hear that caracals live in such close proximity, perhaps illustrating how good they are at going unseen! As can be seen on this website, a lot of really exciting work is being done to study the effects that urbanisation is having on these cats, from movement patterns and gene flow to rodenticide and disease exposure. My project is a small part of this larger ongoing research effort and will investigate their diet. However, I’m hoping to make it a bit more interesting for myself by putting the dietary data in a spatial context, linking what they choose to eat, where they choose to eat it and how this is influenced by urbanisation. We expect that while there might be easy pickings near the urban edge, this may draw caracals closer to the risks of the big city… There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch!

Gabi Leighton