A sad day for Safari....

Safari

Our resident female leopard (Panthera pardus) Vukile has been denning for the last month, all our focus has been on her. Keeping track of her den site and how far she wonders of from the den. 

The male leopards had more important business to attend to, as to who was the King of Hlambanyahti, since our arrival or the reserve the two have been in the boxing ring (literally) one of our roads circling down to the Mkuze river where the two's boundary line for territories meet.

Often they were found growing and calling, circling each other, but this time Mvula won.

We found Safari's carcass badly decomposed on the Wednesday morning, the autopsy revealed he must have been killed on the Weekend. His position next to the riverbed made him especially hard to track. Bite marks to the neck, shoulder and thigh made fight club look like a primary school wrestling match. A blow that made his eye pop out suggest he might have been caught unexpectedly.

We are all sad to say goodbye to Safari, and exited to see what Mvula will be doing in the near future....

This is Mvulas 4th victim, not your average house cat I would say.

Mvula the new dominant male on Hlambanyahti

Ester van der Merwe

Base Manager

GVI Hlambanyahti



A sad day for Safari....