Читать книгу The Impossible Five - Justin Fox - Страница 7

Tijger! Tijger! vlammenvuur

In het berg van ’t nachtlijk uur*

Quinton Martins is mad. Not in some superficial, mildly nutty way, but rather with a deep and abiding insanity. His madness began in 2003 when he became obsessed with the idea of finding the Cape mountain leopard. Most Capetonians know they exist – their tracks are occasionally spotted in the mountains, and a farmer kills one every few years, to much public consternation – but no one ever actually sees them. As such, they only half-exist, occupying a place at the borders of public mythology.

In 2003, Quinton began looking for the elusive cat in the Cederberg, a mountain wilderness only two hours north of Cape Town. For weeks at a time, he’d hike alone in the remoter parts of the berg, searching for any sign of leopard. His passion grew into a master’s thesis, and then a doctorate. He poured all his time and money into finding the cat. Sometimes he’d lug a backpack filled with sixteen cameras high into the mountains to set up camera traps with infrared sensors. A week or two later, he’d return to retrieve the film (unlike digital, there were only thirty-six shots to a roll) and set the traps in new positions. There were months of blank film strips, or shots of small, unremarkable mammals. Then one day he was in his local camera shop collecting photos and, as usual, he idly asked if the latest batch had any shots of cats.

‘Ja, I think there’s a nice one of a spotted kitty,’ said Zelda, the shop assistant.

It was as though Quinton had stuck his finger in a light socket. Before he was fully aware of his actions, he’d vaulted the counter and run through to the back room. Sure enough, his camera trap had captured the image of a male leopard, destined to become M1, the first in a long line of cats that would consume Quinton’s life.

It was nine months before he glimpsed his first leopard, and another year before he captured and collared one. He ran out of money and sold everything, including his car, to keep the fieldwork going. He had to hitchhike from Cape Town to the berg and do his research on foot, covering thousands of kilometres in the mountains with temperatures well below freezing in winter and as high as 47°C in summer. He carried no tent, just an old sleeping bag. When it snowed, he sheltered in caves or rocky overhangs. Madness.

Since childhood I, too, have had a thing for leopards, the most elusive of the Big Five. I wanted to meet Quinton … and hopefully one of his spotted friends.

Driving up the N7 one spring morning, wildflowers lined the road through the undulating Swartland. It led up over the Piekenierskloof Pass towards the ramparts of the Cederberg, home to Quinton and his leopards. After the orange orchards of Citrusdal, I took the Algeria turn-off and crossed the chattering waters of the Olifants River on a causeway. This is the symbolic entrance to the most beautiful mountain range in Africa.

I stopped and got out to drink from a stream fringed with white sandbanks. Before me stood Grootberg’s ochre buttresses, the berg’s main portal. The road snaked between slabs of Table Mountain sandstone towards a saddle in the clouds, each ridge leading me higher and deeper, past Algeria, over Uitkyk Pass and finally into the lovely, sequestered Driehoek Valley. The floor was covered in sedges and marshes, the walls with boulders and protea bushes.

I was now in the heart of the Cederberg Wilderness area, 71 000 hectares of mountainous terrain, impossibly rich in fynbos and home to the rare and endangered Clanwilliam cedar tree and snow protea. This alpine fastness is still frequented by smaller wildlife such as grey rhebok, klipspringer, honey badger, caracal, Cape fox, porcupine and Cape clawless otter, while raptors such as black eagle and jackal buzzard circle in the thermals overhead. The streams are home to the richest variety of endemic fish south of the Zambezi, most of them endangered. The prettiest of these is the Doring fiery redfin. With its sleek, spotted body and scarlet fins, it looks like a cross between a leopard and a daisy.

The Cederberg’s allure is enhanced by its rich human history. These mountains were once the realm of San hunter-gatherers, and possess a wealth of rock art stretching back at least 8 000 years. This is, in fact, the Louvre of the Cape. Some of its most famous paintings, such as the iconic rain elephants – a row of ochre pachyderms thought to be a rainmaking site of shamans – are found at the Stadsaal rock formation, close to where I would be staying.

I’d booked a cabin on Driehoek Farm, and brought along enough provisions for a lengthy spell of self-catering, which for me means lots of braaiing, so my vehicle was essentially full of wood and meat. A farm road led to a cluster of buildings, some thatched and whitewashed in the Cape manner, loosely arranged around a green commonage. Sheep filled a field, a vineyard clung to the slope and the battlements of the central berg rose up on all sides. It was ruggedly idyllic. A pack of dogs, led by a white Labrador, bounded up and escorted me to reception. We passed an inflamed male turkey, ogling a dowdy female and gobbling appreciatively. He made a valiant attempt to mount her, but she was having none of it. The Labrador barked encouragement while I knocked on the door. It was opened by Lizette du Toit, the farmer’s daughter. As she signed me in, we got chatting about leopards.

‘Farmers used to set gin traps to kill predators, but with Quinton around things have changed a lot,’ she said. ‘You must ask him about Houdini, the old leopard that took fifteen of our sheep. My dad wanted him dead.’

Lizette told me that Driehoek was established in 1832, making it the oldest farm in the Cederberg; it has been in the Du Toit family for five generations. She showed me a selection of their wines, whose grapes came from some of the highest vineyards in South Africa. I was given a map, and she pointed out a number of walks on the farm and adjacent kloofs.

‘Have 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 slowly moved my hand to my camera and she watched its progress intently. I raised this crappy digital point-and-shoot, pressed the trigger and poof, she was gone. It’s so isolated back in those kloofs, there’s a good chance she’d never seen a human in her life before. What a privilege, man, what a privilege.’

The track petered out and the going got rougher. We crossed a river, drew to a halt beside a large boulder and got out. Before us was a scene suggestive of a slaughterhouse. A grysbok hung upside down from a hook hammered into the rock, its stomach slit open, blood dripping from nose and mouth. Heads and limbs of various animals lay scattered about. The stench was overwhelming.

‘The grysbok is road kill,’ explained Quinton. ‘The other body parts are offcuts from an abattoir.’

He pointed out the invisible trap. Sticks and bushes had been arranged so there was only one easy way to reach the suspended buck. Quinton checked the foot-loop snare while I stood at a distance trying to control my nausea. Once he’d checked and reset the trap, we headed on foot up Uilsgat Kloof along a path used by F10, also known as Spot, a female leopard who frequented the valley. Quinton carried a backpack with trapping paraphernalia, which included a mallet and a number of metal stakes. The sun was low and we moved in and out of icy shadows. I realised I should have brought a jacket. We passed a second trap, right in the middle of the path. A red flag and signs warned people to keep clear. ‘I’ve asked CapeNature to close this area to the public,’ said Quinton. ‘Hikers are such a pain. They don’t read the notices. Or, if they do, the buggers come and snoop around, triggering the snare. They’re clueless.’

I was about to mention that leopards could simply read the warning signs and avoid the area, but realised it was my childhood imagination – where literate cats were the norm – intruding.

Quinton was looking for a suitable place to set another trap. As we headed further up the path, I noticed that he had, almost imperceptibly, begun to change. His gait was somehow different, his body slightly hunched. He seemed more alert, more twitchy, stopping often, looking at the path with a cocked head. Thinking like a leopard?

‘Here, this is the place,’ he said at last, lowering his backpack and taking the spade I’d been carrying. He dug a square hole, levered a foam base into position and laid the trap over the top. It comprised a simple foot plate with a trip and spring fastened to a wire noose that would tighten around the animal’s paw. The wire was thick and smooth so as not to hurt the cat. It was attached to a bungee cord so the leopard’s yanking would not break a limb. Quinton taped over any rough areas on the wire and cleared all stones and sharp sticks in the immediate vicinity so the creature couldn’t wound itself as it thrashed about trying to extricate a paw. He carefully set the spring and attached a transmitter. The contraption was secured with long metal stakes driven into the ground by a mallet. It was imperative that a leopard be prevented from breaking free and heading into the hills with a trap attached to its leg.

‘Aren’t these snares just like the wire ones set by poachers?’ I asked through chattering teeth.

‘Similar. It’s actually a more effective and safer method than the cage traps we used to employ. Animals picked up more injuries trying to force their way out of the cages. As long as we get to them soon after the trap is sprung, wire snares are okay. That’s why the transmitters have to be monitored at all times.’

He showed me how to set up a transmitter and how, as soon as the magnetic connection was severed, it began sending an altered signal. The volunteers at Driehoek would then call Quinton on a satellite phone and he’d race to the trap. If there was indeed a leopard caught, rather than a red-faced hiker, he’d phone the nearest vets, who were on permanent standby and could be there within two hours to dart the animal. A collar would then be fitted, measurements taken, and tissue and whisker samples extracted for DNA analysis. The cat would also be weighed, its age determined by teeth colouration and wear, and its general condition assessed.

Once fitted with a GPS collar, the animals could be tracked around the clock. Quinton was gathering valuable information from the data downloaded in the process. During the period of his PhD research, he’d managed to trap and collar thirteen leopards, and had gained considerable insight into their movements, diet and habits.

‘Where did you catch your first one?’ I asked.

‘It was on Driehoek farm in August 2005,’ he said, pushing back his floppy hat and wiping the sweat from his forehead. ‘We’d been trying to get him for three months. His name was Houdini, and for good reason. By that stage I was already nearly two years into my research, and had not yet had a proper, close encounter with a leopard. Houdini had been nailing sheep throughout the valley, but I convinced the farmers to give me a chance at nabbing him. That cat was a sly one. Eventually we lured him with a sheep carcass, but he escaped from the first trap. We reset it and caught him a week later. Again, he escaped. It took another five weeks before we finally got him.’

Once he’d finished preparing the trap, Quinton arranged his camouflage and subterfuge devices. By now, I was so cold I was having to bounce up and down to keep the blood circulating. Quinton ignored me as he covered his contraption with sand. This couldn’t be done with a tell-tale human hand, so soil was sifted through a colander and sprinkled over the snare. Next, he cut foliage and planted it in a manner that would lead a leopard into the trap. Sticks were laid to encourage the cat to assume a particular stride and place its paw in exactly the right spot. Quinton got down on his hands and knees, head to one side, staring sceptically at the trap. He raised his front paw a little, hesitated, then adjusted a twig. If you narrowed your eyes, you could almost see his spots. Crawling a few paces on all fours, he slunk into the trap, all but triggering the snare on his wrist.

‘The data we’ve been collecting can be used to alleviate conflict between farmers and predators,’ he said, morphing back into semi-human form. ‘We need to understand the role of predators in eco-systems. The Cape Leopard Trust is actually more about broader environmental conservation. We’re using leopards as our flagship species for a much bigger project.’

By now I was hugging myself to keep warm, and I could feel my lips turning blue. If I didn’t ask any more questions, maybe he’d hurry up, stop acting like a suspicious leopard and take me back to my snug cabin.

‘You see, many farmers, and even the Department of Agriculture, ignore the fact that when you kill the apex predators, others simply move in. If you do somehow manage to eliminate all of them, another species will fill the gap and could bring with it even bigger problems. For instance, if you knock off all the leopards in one area, you might get a population explosion of dassies. The apex predators keep everything in balance. So the future must be about livestock management, not predator destruction.’

‘Gets a bit ch-ch-chilly up here when the s-s-sun goes down,’ I spluttered.

‘Are you getting cold?’

‘I-I-I think—’

‘Look, we need to maintain functioning eco-systems.’ Quinton wasn’t interested in my discomfort. ‘The Trust is conducting experiments with sheep farming in the Northern Cape. We’re using trained herders and special dogs. The herders gather all sorts of info on both the livestock and the predators. This way we can make farming more scientific and offer concrete results to the naysayers.’

‘Um, I think I m-m-might need to head back to the ve-ve-ve-hicle before hypothermia sets in.’

‘We want to do more studies on baboon, caracal and jackal. Also klipspringer and dassie, to see how the whole eco-system fits together. And to find ways of alleviating farmer-predator conflict.’

I began swinging my arms around like a windmill, hoping centrifugal force would return some blood to my hands.

At last Quinton was done. He stood up, brushed the sand from his knees and took off his heavy-duty gloves. Apart from the red flag and warning signs, it was impossible to see that the path hid a trap. Quinton loaded the remnants of the equipment into his backpack, handed me the spade and we trudged back down the valley. Ahead of us, the sun’s last rays illuminated Tafelberg. Its highest ramparts glowed in gaudy shades of salmon; the rest of the valley was sunk in shadow.

Quinton dropped me back at the cabin and headed to his home deeper in the mountains at Matjiesrivier. I donned three extra layers and lit a braai fire. The wind was sniping and low clouds poured in from the west over Middelberg. I opened a bottle of workmanlike Shiraz and sat beside the fire staring at the living darkness. There was no moon and the stars hissed quietly in the icy firmament. The stream grumbled loudly, wind whooshed in the bare branches, the mountains pressed closer. Somewhere nearby was my leopard, up there among the crags, perhaps hunting, perhaps taking refuge from the elements beneath an overhang. Maybe she was watching me.

Sitting beside the pyramid of flames, I thought about how the Cape mountain leopard has become a creature of legend and a symbol of what the Cape has lost. Three-and-a-half centuries ago, when Jan van Riebeeck stepped ashore to found his little settlement to grow veggies for scurvy-ridden sailors of the Dutch East India Company, the peninsula had teemed with game. Cape Town itself was home to the Big Five. There were leopards on the crags of Table Mountain, buffalos and rhinos grazing the marshlands of Green Point, lions in Oranjezicht and elephants browsing beside the streams of the CBD, while the grunt of hippos echoed around the city bowl. It was an Eden of almost unimaginable bounty.

Settlers and farmers soon began to clear the land. The hippos of Cape Town’s rivers were among the first to be shot. By the end of the twentieth century, there was not a single member of the Big Five left on the peninsula. The slaughter of large game continued throughout the Western Cape. In most places, only the names remind us of what we have lost: Zeekoevlei, Buffels Bay, renosterveld, Leeukloof, Olifants River. Most prevalent is the name ‘tier’ or ‘tyger’. Early Dutch settlers, unfamiliar with wild African fauna, called the leopards they encountered ‘tigers’. Travelling among the mountains of the Cape, it’s never long before you come across a Tygerberg or Tierkop, a Tierberg or Tierkranskop. Of all the Cape’s free-roaming game, it was these secretive creatures that had the best chance of surviving into the twenty-first century. Their ghostly presence in the mountains fringing the city is a reminder of the rich diversity of wildlife we have lost.

After a meal of wors, chops and potato in a skin of tinfoil, I climbed into a bed piled with blankets. Sleep came quickly … and I found myself stumbling along a track in the mountains. There was no moon to light the way, only a softening of the darkness that marked a sandy path. I grew frightened. The rocky crags breathed danger. Crickets filled the night with threatening stridulations. There was a presence, something watching me. Perhaps the spotted night cat, Prince of Darkness? My path snaked into a narrow kloof beside a stream. Tall reeds leaned in from either side. The ground was soggy underfoot; my legs grew leaden. I passed beneath a gnarled cedar tree and paused. Thick boughs blotted out the stars. Fear gripped me. I could not take another step.

Looking up, I saw a shape draped on a branch above my head. A pair of golden eyes bored into mine. His lips were parted and I could make out the glint of fangs. What beauty, what lethal grace. I was transfixed. Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright, in the mountains of the night. All power and sinew and dark fire, a work of art crafted by some immortal hand. He stared at me for what seemed an age, each second torn from the flesh of time. Then a wide grin spread across his face.

‘Which way should I go from here?’ I asked timidly.

‘That depends on where you want to go,’ said the leopard.

‘So long as I get somewhere,’ I said.

‘An aardvark lives in that direction,’ he pointed a claw to the north. ‘A riverine bunny in that direction.’ He waved vaguely to the east. ‘But, my boy, they are both absolutely impossible to find.’

The leopard closed his eyes and rested a chin on those mighty paws. His body began to dissolve, leaving only his wide, Cheshire grin hanging in the air. I walked on into the night, tingling with excitement.

The rusty hinges of guinea fowl woke me early, followed by a spell of utter silence. I got up and looked out the window. The ground was white with frost. The mountains were colourful cut-outs against a dark-blue sky. A hadeda ibis strutted about, drilling the lawn with its beak. After I had breakfasted on muesli and cold boerewors, Quinton arrived to collect me. We picked up Garth and Lorraine, and headed down the Driehoek Valley in search of Max. Gracie the macaw agreed to stay behind and hold the fort: her biting tongue would certainly scare off most intruders. Except, perhaps, a spotted cat.

Quinton soon picked up a strong signal coming from the male leopard’s collar on Sneeuberg, the 2 027-metre massif to our right. Fortunately, he had a key to a private gate which let us onto a forestry track that wound up the side of a kloof towards the peak. We crossed a stream and ploughed through tall vegetation, its fingers brushing the sides of the 4X4. The track grew steeper and more rocky. On a rise above us stood a line of iconic cedar trees, highly endangered and probably on their way to extinction. Prone to fire and ruthlessly felled for timber in the twentieth century, only a few specimens of this endemic species cling on in the high berg.

A pair of black eagles circled above us like patrolling aircraft, ominous shapes etched against the sky. Like leopards, they are apex predators of the berg, and there’s no love lost between cat and bird as they compete for the same prey. Whenever eagles get the chance, they dive-bomb leopards to scare them away from their territory.

We came to a halt at what looked like a stone igloo beside the track. There was a narrow entrance and a metal sliding door that could be triggered to drop like a guillotine and imprison a creature inside. It was a sinister contraption, casting a pall over the beauty around us.

‘This is an old leopard trap,’ said Quinton. ‘All the farms in the area used to have them. Some are more than a hundred-and-fifty years old. Once the creature was caught, you could shoot it from above through gaps in the stonework. Farmers knew exactly where to place these things. So I’ve put quite a few of my own traps around here and had good success.’

He went on to explain that gin traps are still used extensively throughout South Africa to eliminate ‘problem animals’. Thousands of these nasty devices litter the rural landscape. They are indiscriminate, brutal and kill or maim far more innocent animals than rogues. Usually made of metal with saw-tooth jaws, the traps can sever a paw or ensnare the wounded animal long enough for it to starve to death.

‘We are making progress, though, especially in the Cederberg. I’ve persuaded many farmers to change their methods, for instance, by introducing Anatolian sheep dogs. They’re a far better deterrent than traps.’

Then something caught Quinton’s eye. ‘Look there!’ he exclaimed, crouching next to the track and pointing at a vague indentation in the sand. He took out a tape measure. ‘Paw print. Six-and-a-half centimetres. Female. I’m sure it’s F11. We haven’t caught and collared her yet, so she doesn’t have a proper name.’

We walked a little way up the slope, following the spoor. Quinton pointed at the ground again. It was scat. It’s difficult for lay people to fathom the excitement animal droppings induce in zoologists. Quinton fell to his knees like a worshipper and studied the specimen. He explained that usually only half the scat is taken for analysis, as it serves as a territory marker for leopards. Samples are soaked in formalin, washed, and the hair separated from other remains before being oven dried at 60°C.

Then the analysis can begin. To identify prey, the hair length and colour are noted, as well as cuticular hair-scale patterns. The presence of bone fragments and hooves also aids identification. Small rodents are trickier, although teeth found among the remains can help. Quinton explained that through scat research, he’d recorded twenty-three species in the diet of these opportunistic feeders, including everything from lizard to cow. I thought of the many hours Quinton must have spent soaking faeces in formalin, baking them and then the days spent analysing the contents. Dedication such as this must surely be fed by a particular brand of obsession.

We pressed on up the pass, switchbacking through precipitous bends, creeping along the mountain face on a hairline track that led us into a world of jumbled sandstone and bright green fynbos. Clouds cast giant dapples across the valley below. All the while, the bleating transmission from Max’s collar grew more intense. At the top of the pass we got out, and Quinton aimed his VHF telemetry at a nearby koppie. The signal was strong. He switched to a UHF aerial and got a GPS fix from the collar. Max was eight-hundred-and-fifty metres to the west, just this side of a tall ridge. The four of us spent a few minutes scanning the area with binoculars, but saw nothing. Every bush and boulder looked vaguely feline. Every element in the landscape seemed ideal camouflage for a leopard.

‘Okay, we’re going to have to hike in after him,’ said Quinton. ‘It could get a bit rough.’

The two retirees opted out; they said they’d rather sit and watch the view. Out came folding chairs and a flask of coffee. Knowing a wild-goose chase when I saw one, I half-wanted to join them. But I’d come to the berg to bag a leopard, and this was as good a shot as any. Hats, water bottles, telemetry, binoculars – we were good to go.

Ahead of us lay difficult terrain: a salad of rocks that had been sliced and diced into uncomfortable shapes. Quinton set off at a cracking pace. He has long legs and is used to pursuing feline quarry in the mountains. I have city legs, made for strolling the promenade as far as my local coffee bar. My lack of fitness became painfully apparent about a minute into our pursuit. Quinton was like a Zen walker who never actually seemed to touch the ground. His leather Caterpillar hooves were like wings; my old veldskoens like anchors. I puffed and wheezed in his wake. Where his strides propelled him over gaps, I found myself caught between them. While his breathing remained even, I sounded like a steam engine.

He crouched behind a pile of stones up ahead. I made a last push, using all my reserves of strength to catch up. He glanced back with a frown and put a finger to his lips. I flopped down beside him, heaving like a turtle that had just lugged its body up a beach. I was as red as a tomato, and sweat was pouring off me. Quinton might have had a drop of perspiration on his brow. We had covered at least four-hundred, near-vertical metres. He poked the telemetry aerial above the ledge like a periscope. Max had to be very close.

There was no signal whatsoever, only a hissing sound. ‘Shit, the bugger’s gone over the edge,’ whispered Quinton. ‘Might have got wind of us. Come on!’

We were off again, bounding up the slope to the next ridge line. The weather had begun closing in. Low clouds scudded through gaps in the berg. The wind turned icy, and the towering Sneeuberg dissolved into white. It began to rain. Quinton was pulling ahead once more. I watched him stop and stare at the terrain, head to one side, thinking like a cat again. Which way would Max have gone? Then the half-man, half-leopard slunk over a rise and disappeared.

After thirty minutes we reached another ridge line. I collapsed next to Quinton, wheezing like a rasp. My thighs were incendiary and my right knee, the dickey one, had sort of capitulated. My vision was all spots and floaty hallucinogens. A leopard could have been standing two metres away, and I’d have dismissed it as retina malfunction.

Quinton raised his telemetry aerial. ‘I’ve got a faint signal. Could be bouncing off the cliff. Max is heading west. He’s missioning. We’ll never catch him. This is the easternmost part of his range. He could be gone for weeks now, prowling his territory along the western slopes of the berg. It’s completely inaccessible. I’m sorry.’

We headed back, making a detour to a spot where Max had recently made a kill. All that remained was a sprinkling of klipspringer fur, which had been carefully removed and discarded by the leopard, and a reeking pile of stomach contents. Everything else had been consumed.

‘From the data we got off his GPS collar, we know Max spent about twenty-four hours on this carcass,’ said Quinton. ‘When we notice a GPS cluster in one particular spot, we come and investigate. These cats are so mobile that when they’re stationary for a while, they’re usually on a kill. But we missed him by about an hour. Such a sneaky fellow is our Max.’

That evening, Quinton was due to give a talk on leopards at Mount Cedar, a popular lodge in a nearby valley. I got a lift with Garth and Lorraine to Quinton’s Matjiesrivier home, a traditional thatched cottage leased from CapeNature, where he lives with his wife Elizabeth. She’s a willowy woman with a mane of curly auburn hair and a Julia Roberts smile. Elizabeth used to be a Waldorf teacher in Stellenbosch. Now she runs environmental education and wilderness camps for children at Matjiesrivier. Their house serves as the de facto headquarters of the Cape Leopard Trust. The tall, creaky interiors are crammed with zoological books, pictures of big cats and maps of their distribution. It’s the delightfully jumbled home of working scientists.

We transferred to Quinton’s vehicle for the trip to Mount Cedar. Night was falling and the mountains were at their most seductive. As we drove, the rocks turned from gold to purple to burnished black, and stars began to prick the sky. Nearing the lodge, we breasted a rise and Quinton said: ‘This is exactly where I saw my first leopard. I’d been searching for nearly a year by then, and suddenly there it was, caught in my headlights. Just the briefest glimpse. Incredible.’

He told us about his early searches in the desolate Karoo Cederberg to the east of the road we were driving. ‘It’s the most isolated part of these mountains. No one ever goes there. That’s why I love it so much. You can walk for days and not see any sign of humans. Pure wilderness. I was in the leopards’ environment, alone, sleeping wild. Occasionally I’d be backtracking along a route I’d just walked and there’d be fresh leopard spoor across my path. They knew all about my presence. I’d often hear other animals alarm-calling. I knew the leopards were close. But never so much as a glimpse. Not seeing them made it even more special, if you get my drift. The invisible cats. Like a fairy-tale.’

We arrived at Mount Cedar for Quinton’s 6.30pm presentation to a bunch of wealthy tourists. There were possible sponsors among them, so Quinton had been persuaded by the tour leader to do his ‘song-and-dance routine’. But there was no one in the auditorium, and Mount Cedar’s dinner is served at seven o’clock sharp. Quinton has to be a patient man, content to wait months for the glimpse of a cat. Now we witnessed his less patient side. There was, in fact, smoke coming out of his ears. He’d been specially asked to come as a favour. Dinner would just have to wait, or there’d be hell to pay.

Eventually a group of well-heeled guests sauntered in, chatting and laughing among themselves. There were carefully groomed women and blustery men, loud with bravado and bonhomie. I thought Quinton might lose his temper at their tardiness, but the moment he began his talk, he was charm personified, and the audience soon warmed to him. Elizabeth turned off the lights and images flashed on a screen. He’d done the PowerPoint presentation countless times before, and was completely at ease with his material.

We learnt about how, after three-hundred-and-fifty years of farmer-predator strife, most of the Western Cape’s rich wildlife biodiversity had disappeared. The last big cats, hanging on in a few scraps of wilderness, were all that was left. When Quinton founded the Trust in 2004, an average of eight leopards were being shot in the Cederberg each year. Since 2004, only two had been killed.

He explained that the Cape leopard was an iconic ‘umbrella species’, used as an emblem for research on the entire eco-system and for environmental education. The tools of his trade were simple. Feet on the ground were the most important element, since much of the terrain was inaccessible by vehicle. Infrared-camera traps were vital, as they provided permanent eyes and could be used to identify individual leopards, their distinctive pattern of spots being the equivalent of a human fingerprint – no two exactly the same.

Quinton showed maps depicting the ranges of his cats. He’d found that in the mountains, male leopard ranges were up to two-hundred square kilometres, compared to the Karoo, where ranges were as high as 1 200 square kilometres, or the densely populated Kruger National Park, where they were as low as twenty-five square kilometres. He’d recorded how ranges changed over time as cats were forced out or died. His leopards traverse up to thirty kilometres a day, patrolling their territory, hunting and looking for mates. Only one male at a time holds any given patch, although you might find females and young cats overlapping.

Quinton pointed to bunches of dots on his maps, depicting GPS clusters, and explained that these indicated where a leopard had made a kill. By visiting these sites, an accurate picture of their diet had been put together. A pie graph showed a menu comprising forty-four percent klipspringer, thirty-four percent dassie and three percent livestock, with the balance made up of a wide range of creatures in very small quantities.

He stressed that his research had proved that farm animals comprised a negligible part of the leopards’ diet. The key to removing them completely from the menu was livestock management. He spoke about his project in Namaqualand, where eco-ranger herders with Anatolian sheep dogs were doing pioneering work with sheep flocks. Employing herders and dogs and placing livestock in kraals at night almost entirely eradicated predation. It simply required a mind shift by farmers.

Quinton then showed photographs from his infrared-camera traps. They depicted the wide biodiversity of the berg, from porcupine and honey badger to caracal and baboon. Next came an image of two frolicking leopard cubs, which had the audience ahh-ing. ‘These little beauties were born on 7 January 2011,’ said Quinton. ‘Both have survived and dispersed into the mountains.’

When his talk ended, the audience had plenty of questions.

How much did mountain leopards weigh?

Answer: males were about thirty-five kilograms, which was half that of their cousins elsewhere in Africa.

Were Cape mountain leopards a subspecies in their own right?

Answer: probably not, although more research had to be done. However, one feature that distinguished them from other leopards was a black rather than a pink nose.

How many Cape leopards were left?

Answer: about thirty adults in the Cederberg and possibly four-hundred in total. It was a terribly fragile population. A bad spate of a disease such as feline Aids could wipe them all out.

Were there any left on Table Mountain or the Cape Peninsula?

Answer: no, although many hikers had reported otherwise. Quinton would have to be shown photographs to be convinced. The range around Cape Town had shrunk to unsustainable proportions. ‘You’d find Constantia poodles and Boulders Beach penguins getting nailed if they were still around,’ said Quinton. ‘We must assume that peninsula leopards are extinct.’

The applause was loud and long. The tour leader stood up to thank Quinton, and told his group that the Cape Leopard Trust survived on donations alone. Would they please give generously. As we were packing up, he came to tell us that a number of guests would be dipping into their purses for the cause. Our trip had not been in vain.

‘Fundraising and PR are a huge part of the job,’ said Quinton as we drove back. ‘I’d love to be on my own in the berg, tracking leopards full-time, but it’s just not possible anymore. The Trust is a big organisation with staff and responsibilities. We have projects all over the Cape, investors to keep satisfied, and the interested public needs to be informed about our activities.’

We returned to Matjiesrivier for supper. Around the braai, talk was all about the elusive nature of Cape leopards. Quinton had worked at Londolozi for years, where leopards were spotted on almost every game drive. He’d recently visited Phinda Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal to compare notes with researchers using similar trapping methods. Before they’d even finished setting the last in a series of snares, the first one was triggered by an inquisitive leopard. In the Cederberg, you could wait half a year for that.

‘So why on earth do you do it?’ I asked.

‘Part of the mystery is their elusiveness. I’m not generally a patient man—’

‘You can say that again,’ Elizabeth cut in.

‘But I make an exception for leopards. I have to.’

Elizabeth told us about the time they had a television crew staying with them for a month, desperate for a sighting. Quinton stared sheepishly into his beer as his wife recounted the incident. Days dragged by and they had no luck. Finally one of the transmitters was triggered at a cage trap high in the mountains. It took them hours to lug the camera equipment up to the spot. When they got close enough, the crew set up a shot looking down on the hidden trap. With the cameras rolling, Quinton cautiously approached the cage, only to discover that the cat had managed to escape. At that precise moment, his frustration boiled over, and with a roar of rage, he picked up the cage and hurled it over a cliff, cameras rolling all the while. The TV crew got some lovely footage of an enraged man-leopard.

The next day, Lorraine and Garth had to return to the city to attend their grandchildren’s performance in a school concert. Instead of dismantling the three traps and waiting for more volunteers to arrive, I offered to take over the monitoring. This involved checking the frequencies of each trap every couple of hours throughout the day and night. If the pulse doubled from its normal forty beats per minute, a snare had been triggered and I was to summon Quinton pronto. We rigged up an aerial on the roof of my cabin, and led the cable through a window so the receiver could reach my bedside table. That way, I wouldn’t have to get up in the night to check the signal.

‘If the trap is sprung, I’ll go in alone and assess the situation,’ said Quinton. ‘I don’t want you with me at that point. Approaching an angry cat can be terrifying. I was once stalked by a leopard in Londolozi. There’s nothing quite like that primal fear.’

I imagined a writhing, spitting ball of teeth and claws at the end of a wire, and agreed that it would probably be best if I came later with the vets and their darting rifles. Preferably a hundred metres behind them.

For the rest of my time at Driehoek, I stayed close to the receiver. I took the occasional stroll around the farm or along the lower slopes of Corridor Peak behind the homestead, but felt responsible for the traps. I didn’t want a leopard to spend any longer than was necessary with its paw in a noose. However, all frequencies continued to bleat a negative. I set my alarm clock to sound at intervals through the night. Each time I woke to check the receiver, there’d be a thrill of expectation. It was like spinning a roulette wheel: this time I’d strike it lucky.

Days dragged by, and I began to worry I might sit in that hut for weeks with no reward. Besides, the city had begun to assert itself. First the odd sms, then phone calls: bills, the plumber, a body-corporate meeting. Eventually, I had no choice but to pack for home.

On my last day in the mountains, Quinton and Elizabeth arrived to take me on a concerted hunt for Spot, the female that frequented our area. It was a final roll of the dice.

Driving up Uilsgat Kloof, we picked up a strong telemetry signal. She was definitely in the valley. But where? Her echo bounced off the rocky walls, making accurate bearings difficult. We parked and got out.

‘I’m getting a fairly good signal from the other side of the kloof, half way up Mied se Berg,’ said Quinton. ‘You okay for a bit of a hike?’

‘Sure,’ I said unconvincingly. By now, I knew what ‘a bit of a hike’ meant.

As we prepared our packs with water, food, cameras, binoculars and telemetry equipment, Elizabeth glanced at the cliff and exclaimed: ‘Look at those black eagles! They’re attacking something!’

‘My God, I’ll bet you it’s Spot,’ said Quinton, grabbing his binoculars.

We watched the two great birds making an attack run. They approached in a parabolic swoop, then folded their wings and dropped out of the sky in a near-vertical dive. As they plummeted, each bird let out a scream that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The Stuka dive-bombers of the berg. At the last moment, when it seemed inevitable they’d smash themselves against the cliff in an explosion of feathers, the birds flared their enormous wings, talons extended, almost brushing the rock as they soared back into the blue.

‘There, on that big boulder, she’s cowering!’ shouted Quinton.

I trained my binoculars in the direction he was pointing. Nothing. Or perhaps a glimpse of movement?

‘Where exactly?’ I asked.

‘The big round rock, above the diagonal one.’

I looked again, willing the leopard to show itself. Which round rock, which diagonal one? They were all round or diagonal. There! Had I seen something? Maybe just the hint of cat, a vague feline suggestion? Maybe not.

‘She must have slipped behind the rock,’ said Quinton. ‘Let’s move. Fast. If we angle to the left, we can herd her up the valley towards our traps and maybe get a sighting into the bargain.’

‘Herding cats,’ I muttered under my breath as we set off across the valley floor at an unsustainable pace. Quinton and Elizabeth took giraffe strides; mine were more suburban. We came to a stream and my two companions stepped over it without breaking stride. I sloshed through, filling my shoes with mud. By now, every animal in the valley knew about Spot, and the alarm calls of a grey rhebok ahead of us were picked up by a troop of baboons. The kloof was a natural amphitheatre, and the sounds echoed around us, backed by a chorus of birdsong. I was thrilled. It was just like being David Attenborough in the climactic scene of a BBC doccie.

We scaled the western slope and veered along a contour towards the likely boulder. My two companions had changed from giraffes to klipspringers, their cloven hoofs gripping the rocks as they gambolled ahead. I slipped, grazing a knee. The telemetry, pinging like sonar, told us Spot hadn’t moved far, and Quinton motioned us to continue in complete silence.

We came to an outcrop, took off our packs and scrambled up to a ledge. My shoe sent a pebble clip-clopping down the valley. Quinton looked back at me with a severe frown. Poking our heads over the lip, we scanned the area where Spot should have been. The telemetry told us she was less than fifty metres away, but we just couldn’t see her. The dassies on a nearby boulder were going ballistic with their alarm calls. They’d certainly seen her. All we could do was wait for Spot to show herself.

This waiting and staring and telemetrying and looking at each other with quizzical looks went on for about twenty minutes. Then Quinton edged off to the left and we followed, trying not to dislodge any more stones or breathe too loudly.

‘She’s on the move,’ whispered Quinton. ‘You two wait here. I’ll try to flush her out.’

He scrambled down the rock face, angling to the right to force her up the valley into open ground. His telemetry aerial swung back and forth above his head, making him look like Robotman. We scanned the scrub, triangulating our gaze with the direction of Quinton’s aerial. How could a big cat vanish into such meagre cover, right under our noses, and wearing a telemetry collar to boot?

After half an hour, Quinton returned, looking dejected. We found some shade and ate our sandwiches. ‘As you can see, this is a very, very frustrating game,’ he said, staring across the valley to where the baboon troop barked lustily, marking Spot’s progress somewhere along the opposite slope.

My time was up. I drove out of the enchanted valley, over Uitkyk Pass, and down the winding gravel road to Algeria. My thoughts turned to how, up there in the mountains, the future of leopards was relatively secure. For now, at least. The region had once endured the greatest predator-farmer conflict in the Cape, with up to seventeen leopards killed annually. But in 2007, an area of 1 710 square kilometres had been set aside as the Cederberg Conservancy. With Quinton’s help, the entire farming community had agreed to ban gin traps. Livestock farming with sheep, goats and cattle had then been the predominant land use; now wine production, olive trees and citrus predominated. Leopards are not vegetarians … and they’re teetotallers.

And what of Spot? Had I seen her, or hadn’t I? My imagination certainly produced a vision of sorts. Spot was there on the rock, bathed in sunshine, her back arched. She stared up at the great bird falling towards her. Her whiskers bristled as she bared her fangs. Those golden eyes, their pupils narrowed to tiny slits, measured the approach of the eagle, readying herself to strike. A flicking tail, claws anchoring her to the rock, a sinuous body pressed low. I could even hear the soft growl coming from deep inside her, like the sound of distant thunder.

Had I really seen her? Quinton certainly had. Elizabeth might have caught a glimpse. I was less sure. Did the fact that one person in the group achieved a sighting mean that, technically, the group as a whole had seen a leopard? Are one’s own pair of flawed, short-sighted eyes that important in the bigger scheme of ‘the sighting’?

And maybe I had, actually, seen a fleeting shape. A half-sighting or perhaps a ‘sort of’ sighting. Did a half-sighting count as a sighting? If one rounded up the half to a whole, which even the most fastidious accountants permit, then I’d definitely spotted Spot. I had seen a Cape mountain leopard! Sort of.

* Adapted from Erik Bindervoet’s Dutch translation of ‘The Tyger’ by William Blake.