Harassing Leopards and Cheetahs

Perhaps more than any destination in Tanzania's north, Ndutu has undergone the most change in the last few years. With every visit to this wonderful place, I see the increased proliferation of tented camps and numbers of vehicles at sightings. At night I see the lights of new camps and hear their generators when once it was only darkness and insect hum. This past season, I heard stories of harassed cheetahs - such as a vehicle pulling between a cheetah and her cubs so that the occupants could get a photo; the cub was subsequently abandoned and lost. Thankfully, at all my cheetah sightings, every vehicle kept the proper distance. However, this was not the case at two Ndutu leopard sightings. The animals, lying low in the grasses under trees, were trapped by rings of noisy vehicles, fighting each other for the best position. That alone was bad enough, to trap the cats like that, but then, impatient and ill informed, the drivers and their tourists drove forward into the grasses to flush them out. Tourists stood posed with cameras waiting. With the leopards fleeing the scene, the cars in hot and hopeless pursuit, the sighting was lost to everyone. This kind of behaviour is harassment of the animal. And it will take away our right to go off-road in the Ndutu area.

My guests one night at my Ndutu campsite were British wildlife photographers Owen Newman and Amanda Barrett who were in the area for several months working on a film about the migration. They have filmed leopards in Zambia. They are curious animals, they explained. Under the same circumstances, if everyone had been patient and quiet, the cats probably would have shown themselves. On both these occasions in Ndutu, I was relieved that my clients asked if we could leave the sighting rather than condone what was happening. More of us most do the same.

For more about Owen and Amanda, go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/features/331feature2.shtml

Another feline this filmmaker team has filmed is the seldom spotted African Wild Cat. As fate would have it, two tour members who continued on to the Serengeti, after our dinner with Owen and Amanda, saw one of them. It was a first for the driver as well.

27-07-2008