IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Caso, M.S.A. | |
| Leopard pilot population study at Rungwa/Piti ecosystem, Tanzania, East Africa: Final Report | |
| 2002 Full Book | |
The African Leopard (_Panthera pardus_) is one of the most important trophy game animals in East Africa, due to the fact that it is considered by sport hunters as one of the Big Five quarry species. However, there is still a lot of concern about the sustainable amount of hunting for this species in some game reserves of Tanzania. Although leopard appear to be abundant in must places, because of their shy, retiring and semi-nocturnal habits, they are thought to be scarce and even endangered. No proper leopard studies or census have ever taken place in Tanzania's hunting areas. Due to the lack of population studies, the number of licenses issued for this species in game reserves could therefore be-readjusted by the Tanzania Wildlife Authority. For this project we captured ten leopards and we were able to radio collared eight adult animals (3M : 5F). A radio-collar with a GPS sensor was attached to each of these adult cats and we obtained a mean home range mean value for these three males of 136.37 km2 and 25.06 km2 for the four females. With this early data about spatial patterns we can come with an idea of how is leopard population at the Rungwa/Piti ecosystem. |
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