Ingwe Leopard Research

A COOPERATIVE NETWORK BETWEEN THE SAFARI INDUSTRY, CITIZEN SCIENTISTS, UNIVERSITIES AND THE ON TRACK FOUNDATION

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Citizen science

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The INGWE Leopard Research is a citizen-science project registered in South Africa. It is actively conducting a long-term research on leopard populations in the Limpopo province with the aim of providing information that will lead to their improved management. This is achievable by creating a network of participating reserves, private lands and wildlife estates that collect data on leopards and in collaboration with research and academic institutions.
On one hand, tourists and guides, who hold crucial information, help conserving our wildlife, through their daily operations and without extra cost. The safari industry has the capacity to support conservation organisations through the routine collection of long-term data on species of interest (i.e. leopards). On the other hand, citizen scientists (i.e. wildlife estates residents, landowners, tourists etc…) can also actively participate to research by collecting a high amount of data when being in the study area.

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Our aims

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The aims are:

To provide data to update leopard distribution map as requested by the IUCN Cat Specialist Group and
SANBI and in compliance with their standards.

To understand leopards' movements between reserves in the Hoedspruit area through direct observations.

To study leopard density and population trend in the Hoedspruit area by conducting twice a year a 6-week monitoring effort in all the reserves involved.

To demonstrate the benefits of citizen science in supporting research.

All the data are uploaded on a mobile app and all the photographs submitted are used for individual identification. The data collection process follows SABI's best-practice guidelines for monitoring leopards in South Africa. The data will be analysed with students enrolled in a range of universities and/or partner organisations.

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Tools

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Tools
As part of the research, we are using three different tools:

The SMART conservation mobile app to collect sightings and tracks & signs data. Depending on the option used, the app allows to collect data to study distribution (presence-only data) or to study density (presence-absence data).

Camera traps already displayed in the field by citizen scientists.

The African Carnivore Wildbook is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to help with individual identification of the top five African carnivores using patterns recognition.

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