|
A moratorium on hunting leopard has just been signed in South Africa. This is to give Nature Conservation the time needed to attempt to make an estimate of the numbers in the wild. Leopards are such secretive animals that it is extremely difficult to guess their populations. They can live successfully in close proximity to humans without discovery, preying on domestic pets and free range chickens and other farm animals. Farmers will still be able to shoot problem animals, but sport hunting is stopped for the mean time. No one is too unhappy about this because we need to get a handle on numbers before realistic quotas can be allocated. The difficulty of course is getting the needed information. I suspect the numbers will never be known, but hunting will resume when the off take of dogs, cats , goats, chicken, sheep and children becomes unmanageable.
|