Wild cats take a stroll through Cape Town's suburbs

05 July 2015 - 02:00 By SHANAAZ EGGINGTON

Laduma is no ordinary Capetonian, but he enjoys what the city has to offer as he wanders around Cape Town's prime real estate. He is an adult caracal - or rooikat, as South Africans prefer to call the predator - who has proved to be hugely beneficial to researchers as part of a project on the population size and health of wild animals in the Cape Peninsula.He was caught and fitted with a collar that allows the researchers to track him as he moves from ecologically rich spaces around the peninsula to the city suburbs.The leader of the Urban Caracal Project, University of Cape Town wildlife biologist Dr Laurel Serieys, said: "Data from the GPS-enabled collar shows that about a week before the March fires, he ventured into Constantia. Surprisingly, he stayed in this area even as massive fires broke out."The fires hit Cape Town's southern suburbs more than two weeks early this year, destroying homes and disrupting plant and animal life. "It looks like he hunkered down to avoid the flames and heat, leaving the area to head back towards the back of Table Mountain a week after the fire," Serieys said.When he was picked up in the wild, weighing 13kg, Laduma was considered a healthy adult male, although facial scarring suggested he had "been around the block"."According to data collected, we have found that he regularly uses the entire Table Mountain, from the Orange Kloof area to the north, to Front Table and Signal Hill, east to the Newlands forest and Rhodes memorial area, and west to above Camps Bay," Serieys said.mini_story_image_vright1"We were very lucky to capture and radio-collar this individual, and to be able to track how one caracal, clearly a survivor in the harsh Table Mountain environment, adapts and responds to an environment stressed by human activity."The collar will remain on Laduma for six months, then automatically fall off. He was also ear-tagged so that remote cameras can non-invasively monitor his movements.Another caracal of exceptional interest is Jasper, who was captured on April 30 in the Front Table area near the antelope paddocks. "The Cape Town caracals really seem to love open and grassy areas," Serieys said. "He is the youngest male we have captured and is likely to be between one and two years old. Thus far, he has demonstrated that he frequently crosses the M3."Despite their proximity to urban areas, caracals pose no danger to humans and their diet consists of small rodents like rats and mice, squirrels, genets, various bird species and, on occasion, grysbok."The research is a partnership between the Cape Leopard Trust, South African National Parks, the City of Cape Town, private landowners, UCT and the University of California in Santa Cruz. See urbancaracal.org."Urbanisation is the biggest threat to biodiversity conservation worldwide. The Cape Peninsula is considered a biodiversity hot spot that has lost almost all of its large mammals such as lions, leopards, brown hyena and jackals," Serieys said."Caracals play a vital role in maintaining the balance in the ecosystem as they are the largest remaining predator in the area."A key finding of the study so far is that caracals regularly cross the busy M3 linking Cape Town to the southern suburbs...

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