The Impossible Five. Justin Fox
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you ever seen a leopard?’ I asked.
‘Ag, I’ve seen Max, our big male, a couple of times in my life, but these cats are vrek difficult to spot. Good luck!’
She directed me to a cabin that lay a long way down a farm track in a stand of poplar and oak trees, still leafless up here in the cold alpine air. A few empty caravans stood marooned like upmarket shacks in the campsite. My accommodation was a wooden, open-planned affair half encircled by large boulders and a dry-stone wall that dated from the 1800s. Out front a tea-coloured stream slipped through the reeds; beyond lay the serrated foothills of Sneeuberg, stepping away in stony ridges towards the skyline. Behind my cabin stood the squared-off monolith of Tafelberg, towering above the farm. It was a handsome spot.
The heater was on in my room, despite the sunshine. It was going to be bitterly cold at night. My provisions were stacked on the counter: boerewors and chops, plonk red wine, chips, chocolates, spaghetti and pesto in a jar. I hadn’t finished unpacking when I heard a vehicle pull up outside.
A tall figure wearing a floppy hat and spectacles arrived on my stoep, stomping the dust off his boots. ‘So, you ready to bag a leopard, then?’ asked Quinton.
‘Sure!’ I said.
‘Good, let’s go set some traps.’
Quinton was dressed from head to toe in sponsored gear. He had a web of crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes, no doubt from years of staring at the sun-bleached landscape that hid his elusive cats. We climbed into Witblitz, his Land Cruiser, which was branded with stickers from a host of sponsors, including the rather appropriate Leopard’s Leap Winery. The words ‘Cape Leopard Trust’, of which Quinton is the founder and project manager, were emblazoned on the driver’s door.
‘We couldn’t keep the Trust going without sponsors,’ said Quinton as we bounced through the campsite. ‘But the bloody vehicle manufacturers won’t give me a thing. Their 4X4s are carving up the landscape, and they’re too miserly to help with a project aimed at protecting the environment. Bastards.’
He chuckled. ‘It’s not just sponsors we want. Volunteers, too. Speaking of volunteers, I just need to make a quick stop and say hi to a retired couple helping me out. They’re monitoring the transmitters on two traps I’ve set in the valley.’
We pulled up beside a caravan parked in a glade of oak trees a few hundred metres upstream from my cabin. An older, balding man emerged from the tin igloo.
‘No luck, Quinton, I’ve been checking every hour.’ Garth was a cheerful fellow who carried a chestnut-fronted macaw on his shoulder. She chimed in with a loud squawk. ‘Oh, she’s such a clever girl. Wants to be involved in everything, don’t you Gracie, even chasing after big kitties.’ The green bird ran its head up and down Garth’s chin, to the man’s obvious delight. He scratched his little friend’s head with a practised forefinger.
‘She was abused as a chick before we got her,’ said a pink track-suited Lorraine, emerging from the caravan. ‘Now she only loves Garth. So possessive over him. Doesn’t like women at all, not human ones anyway.’ She sounded a bit miffed at having been usurped by a bird. ‘But you’ve at least learnt to poop on command, haven’t you Gracie?’
The bird cocked its head.
‘Poop, Gracie, poop,’ said Garth dotingly, directing her tail away from his shirt. ‘It’s better that she poops out here and not in the caravan or on me.’
‘It brings good luck, you know,’ said Lorraine, trying to sound enthusiastic.
‘I’m not sure how much more good luck I can handle,’ said Garth.
‘Maybe good luck turns bad if you get pooped on too many times,’ quipped Quinton.
‘Oh no, it’s always good luck if it’s from Gracie,’ said Garth.
‘Anyway, better be going,’ said Quinton. ‘We’ll take the receiver and give you a few hours off duty.’
As Quinton pulled away, we could hear Garth and Lorraine saying ‘poop, poop, poop’ and Gracie calling after us ‘bye, bye, bye’.
‘Such a nice couple,’ said Quinton. ‘They’ve volunteered to sit here next to a receiver for a week, just waiting for the signal to change, which tells us a trap has been sprung. Without folks like them, our organisation couldn’t function.’
As we drove up the valley, Quinton told me about the Cape Leopard Trust. By 2004, he’d run out of his savings, and it looked as though the research would have to be abandoned. Then a local farmer, Johan van der Westhuizen, invited Quinton to come and see him in his office in Cape Town. Johan asked him to explain the project in minute detail. The farmer was so impressed, he handed over a cheque for R15 000.
‘That cash injection allowed me to keep going,’ said Quinton. ‘Our first leopard, M1, was named Johan.’
His research soon led him to the conflict between humans and animals, and his focus began to shift. He felt strongly that leopards were being killed or relocated unnecessarily. That’s when the idea of a predator conservation trust came about. Fundraising events were held and money started coming in. The programme grew and was extended into other parts of the Cape. Today, there are leopard projects running in the Boland mountains, Namaqualand and the Gouritz region.
‘The biggest threats to the Cape leopard are habitat loss, persecution and disease,’ said Quinton, dodging a protruding root that lay python-like in the road. ‘It’s only through long-term research over decades that we can truly understand what affects the population. To see the big picture, we’ll also need to do ancillary projects on the leopards’ principal prey, such as dassies and klipspringers.’
Quinton explained that his board of trustees comprised eminent scientists, businessfolk and conservationists. Apart from various leopard projects, the work of the Trust included a comprehensive genetic analysis, which would determine if Cape leopards formed a unique genetic unit or subspecies. Solutions to human-animal conflict were being sought through scientific research, empowering farmers and local communities, as well as encouraging eco-tourism and running education programmes.
Quinton took a right turn down a track that was closed to the public. The vehicle bounced over boulders like an inebriated frog.
‘I first became interested in leopards while tracking them on foot at Londolozi Game Reserve,’ continued Quinton. ‘After a few years working as a field guide, I decided to study again and ended up doing zoology at the University of Cape Town. During varsity holidays, I came hiking in the Cederberg and started to notice leopard tracks. Farmers told me about the problems they were having with leopards, but no one I spoke to had ever seen one. I discovered there was hardly any research on them at all. It was an ideal opportunity.
‘There’s something special about these particular cats. I used to have up to six leopard sightings a day in places like South Luangwa. But here it’s a massive challenge. To me, they represent this incredible wilderness so close to Cape Town. You never see them. But they are here. If they were easy to spot, they’d all have been killed long ago. They’re such elusive, ghost-like creatures.
‘I initiated the research project and funded it myself. We started getting sightings and then began trapping. My best encounter was in a remote kloof on the eastern, Karoo side of the berg. It was a really tough hike to get in there. I was busy setting up a camera station next to a river when I heard a leopard vocalising close by. It’s an unmistakable rasping sound. You never hear that here. I thought the leopard might be coming along the path, so I hid a little way up the slope.
‘Then I heard the vocalising right below me in a riverine thicket. I scanned the bushes with my binoculars. Nothing. Lowering my binocs to get a broader perspective, I saw a tiny movement out the corner of my eye. Slowly I turned my head and there she was, peeping around a rock and staring at me, about eight metres away. She had this absolutely perplexed look on her face: what the hell is this thing?
‘I