Guest Blogger from South Africa

Neil Hayward, a bridge teacher in South Africa, contacted us for a little bit of help with this intriguing project.  You Ray and I were happy to meet Neil’s requests:

Let me know if you want to contact Neil and I will be happy to provide his email address.

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Neil’s Blog

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Bridge teaching and the preservation of one of Africa’s most magnificent animals are not normally two things that would form an association in your mind. However, I read in a local newspaper in Cape Town about the rescue of a wounded leopard in the northern parts of the Cape, which required co-operation between a vet and the Cape Leopard Trust.

That triggered off an idea, based on the fact that I hold quarterly duplicate tournaments in Cape Town for my students: I could use the money left from their entry fee, after deducting expenses, to donate to the Cape Leopard Trust.

I have a third tournament lined up soon to raise the balance of the money needed to buy a specialised camera to be placed in the mountainous wilds near to Oudtshoorn (if you do not know this town, you will find it in your atlas).

The idea is to use images of leopards captured on the camera to reach a more accurate understanding of leopard numbers and the movement of individuals (rosette-like markings captured on film are used for identification, rather as human finger-prints are). Once there is a scientific understanding of the movement of individuals, the Cape Leopard Trust can co-operate with farmers in the area to reduce the degree of persecution of the leopard — always a problem when predator and livestock share a geographical area.    

All of which makes one think about a book written by Jeremy Flint entitled Tiger Bridge. We have just created a variation on that theme.

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For more information about The Cape Leopard Trust

Cape Trust

You can adopt a leopard among other things.  Here is a picture of Martha