Honorary Rangers

Contents ©
Photographs © Peter Buntman and Michael Borcherds
(Saseka creations www.sasekacreations.com) all rights reserved
Designed, created and maintained by Cailey Owen. Hosted by softnet
Last edited 2/26/2010 5:51:58 PM

Please send your name, email address and the word subscribe to the link below

Here are a list of leopards that still need adopting. If you would like to adopt a leopard Click here

M1 is a very large territorial male living in the Zululand Rhino Reserve. His territory extends for just under 2/3's of the 23,000ha game reserve, a very large home range for a leopard in this area. He patrols his area very vigilantly and has been photographed more often than any other leopard during the population survey in the ZRR. He is also becoming more relaxed and is starting to be seen by game drives in the area.

Mikey is a territorial male in the Zululand Rhino Reserve. He holds the second largest territory in the south western part of the reserve that includes some very valuable "leopard real estate" along the banks of the Msunduze River. He shares a territorial boundary with another male in the reserve and both males have been
seen to frequently patrol this boundary and scent mark the same spots. There are two cubs living within his territory and we suspect that
Male 3 is probably their father.

Male 4's territory within the Zululand Rhino Reserve is quite small. He covers only the southern most tip of the ZRR. However, from
previous work in the area we know that his territory extends onto a neighbouring game reserve. Like many leopards, Male 4 moves between the boundary fences of game reserves with great ease. Male 4 is a good
example that in a leopards mind a territory is delineated by social pressures and access to resources-the fences that we put up have very
little to do with that.

Lilla lives in the south western part of the Zululand Rhino Reserve. She was photographed with two cubs, which we suspect must be about 1 year old. We believe that she was in estrous during the survey because we photographed two
different males following behind her by a few hours to a few days.

Female 2 has only been photographed twice and seems to be a little camera shy. The two photographs were taken quite a distance from each other probably during oestrus when they leave their territories. It looks like she is pregnant. She is a very distinctive female with a big elongated backwards "c" marking on her right hand side...and because of this is very easy to identify!

Cub 1 and 2 belong to Lilla and live in the south western part of the game reserve. The very first time they were photographed was in August of 2008, and already in that photograph they were not tiny cubs. This indicates that the cubs must be at least somewhere around one year old in March 2009.

From the photo cub 2 looks like a male. We will keep you updated as we learn more.