“Long story short. A farmer came home and wondered why one of his cows was perched 15m up a tree. Farmer caught the culprit then we rescued him.”
That is how the Owl Rescue Centre in Hartbeespoort pitched its latest fundraiser.
The eye-catching post has drawn a flood of support for the successful rescue of a full-grown male leopard that was caught in a predator trap after killing a cow.
The problem with leopards that have been trapped is that they immediately start chewing their way out of the cage and they break their teeth
— Brendan Murray
The leopard had roamed onto a farm in the Marico area, about 100km west of Rustenburg, where it killed a cow and hauled it up a tree.
The farmer arrived home to find the front half of one of his cows stuck in the tree. He took the remains and placed them in a predator trap, which caught the leopard when he returned for his second course.
“We got a call from a woman on the neighbouring farm on a Sunday evening two weeks ago. She said the farmer had caught a big cat, and although she wasn’t sure what it was we figured by the size of it that it was a leopard,” said wildlife rehabilitator Brendan Murray, who started Owl Rescue Centre about 15 years ago.
Though they started out as an owl rescue facility specialising in birds of prey, they have since branched out and do all manner of wildlife rescues and rehabilitation.
After the farmer agreed not to kill the leopard, Murray and his team picked it up and took it to a vet in Lichtenburg.
“The problem with leopards that have been trapped is that they immediately start chewing their way out of the cage and they break their teeth,” Murray told The Sunday Times. “He got a root canal and so the teeth are being properly fixed.”
The leopard is now in rehab in Lichtenburg and still requires another root canal. The vet bill is estimated at about R10,000.
Once he is declared fit and well after his dental surgery in the coming week, the leopard will be fitted with a smart tracking collar and released back into the wild.
The tracker can be set to transmit a location pin every few minutes to a receiver. This means the big cat’s location is known in real time, and if it becomes necessary to catch him again, he can be quickly and accurately located to within a metre. But is costs a whopping R36,000.
The centre's post was shared more than 700 times, and within a few days enough money had been raised and deposited in the Owl Rescue Centre account.
Murray said they were in contact with nature conservation authorities for permission to release the leopard in one of the reserves in the area where it was captured.
“The problem is that leopards have huge territories and they go where they want. So you can put him in one area and he might move 300km away,” said Murray.
Leopard expert John Power from North West conservation, said their animal capture unit generally handled captures and was in close contact with rescue centres that are usually the first port of call in wildlife captures. These, he said, averaged around one a month.
Power is now in charge of the treatment of the leopard, which is being housed in an enclosure at the De Wildt reserve. He said it is being treated with pain killers and would likely be released in a reserve towards the middle of this month.
Once released, Power will monitor its movements on a map and communicate with people on the ground should it move into areas where it is not welcome.
“The gold medal would be for farmers to tolerate leopards and keep their livestock away from them. We have seen a lot of success stories, but there are also cases where a released animal turns out to be a problem if it keeps going for livestock,” Power said.
Murray said Owl Rescue Centre had been involved in a range of rescue efforts but found the capture of young male baboons roaming the suburbs the most challenging.
“When a male baboon reaches six or seven years old they get kicked out of the troop and then they go roaming in residential areas. They are clever and such characters, and they outsmart you at every turn.”
He said the most memorable encounter happened 18 months ago when they caught a male baboon they named Elon.
“Usually we catch them with a simple baboon trap. You place some bananas on a lever in the middle of the cage. As soon as the baboon grabs the bananas the lever causes the door to close and they are caught — it's a simple mechanism but it works,” Murray said.
“But Elon watched this trap, figured out how it worked and lay down on the ground, stretched out his arm and managed to grab three bananas out while holding the door open with his other hand — and that door was heavy.”
The centre is involved in the regular catching and relocating of animals that cause damage and problems for local farmers, including caracals, jackals and porcupines.
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