A Leopard Never Changes Spots

Spotting the Spots… 

Precisely because a leopard, famously, never changes it’s spots, these spots can be used to accurately identify individuals. If viewed carefully, documented accurately and the data logged using a standardized method your leopard sighting -as a park visitor- can contribute towards an ongoing research database.

This form of data, provided by park visitors, has been successfully used in a number of projects around the world. One of the best examples of such use of visitor records is from the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania, where voluntarily provided tourist photographs have been extensively used to assist in estimating changes in lion population characteristics (Packer et al. 1991). This was of particular importance to account for periods where researchers were absent from the park .

Sri Lanka Yala National Park – Block 1

The Leopard Project is now planning to see if such visitor-captured data obtained from interested visitors and dedicated safari outfits such as the ‘Leopard Safaris’ (see below) team could be utilized to supplement our long term existing research database. In the past decades some enthusiastic, regular park visitors have photo-captured individual leopards with great enough frequency to establish sighting patterns. This has proven useful for our research both in documenting one of our study leopard’s age and illuminating his shifting home range patterns over time.

To get the most, from a scientific perspective, out of opportunistic leopard sightings there are certain elements that are essential to document, some in a standardized manner. The most important is the photograph of the animal with the attendant date, which alone can allow us to keep track of individuals through time. The second key element is an accurate location description. This is best taken with a GPS but detailed descriptions of the area using road names and significant markers are also very useful. This, together with the photograph, allows us to track spatial dynamics, home range attributes and resource selection. Add to this the time of day and weather and we now have a fairly rich piece of information. Finally, more detailed accounts of sightings, including behaviour - such as whether a leopard is sleeping or hunting and how it interacts with other animals - can provide a tremendously useful database when accumulated. This is particularly exciting as one of our main interests is whether the Sri Lankan leopard population exhibits different behavioural attributes as a result of its long term separation from competing large carnivores. This type of information however, requires a certain amount of training on data collection, to ensure that behaviours are accurately interpreted and observer bias is minimized. The best way to ensure objectivity in such accounts is to capture them on video. However we plan to provide a data sheet which can also assist in the recording of relevant information.

Our existing data, gained from both day and night time field research in this block of the park, has allowed us to establish range use, behavioural and ecological patterns for the resident leopards. However we now have long periods of absence from the park due to research commitments in other locations. Utilizing visitor-captured data and comparing this with our existing database will therefore help us to continually monitor the population and keep track of such important aspects as individual life span, home range tenure duration, population turnover, frequency of use of certain areas, range use patterns and reproduction.

Leopard Safaris – www.leopardsafaris.com

This luxury tented safari camp outfit was established in 2006 when it started conducting regular visits to the park. As the name implies it focuses on the island’s only big cat (although certainly not to the exclusion of the park’s other wildlife!) and this concentration on leopard sightings allows for a large visitor database to be accumulated.

The founder and leader of the outfit, Noel Rodrigo, an ardent supporter of the park and its wildlife, has long been a regular park visitor prior to his establishing this company and his leopard sightings, ability to increase sighting chances, information garnered from sightings and photo opportunities have improved greatly in quantity, quality and method. We have known him for many years, through his development into a safari lead and now wish to see if the visitor data captures from the Leopard Safari sightings can be used to supplement existing research. A standardized data format for collecting data has been provided by us together with some basic training; this will help increase the accuracy and overall information captured during leopard sightings .

Keep posted for any new results from this endeavor