Cameras Destroyed in Fires

Nakedi Maputla September 17, 2008

About the Author

Nakedi Maputla is African Wildlife Foundation’s Senior Conservation Scientist. He joined AWF in 2007, working in South Africa's Limpopo region, where he comes from. Nakedi's initial work was focused on studying the great African cats to shape conservation strategies to benefit communities that he… More

In the last three weeks I was away at the AWF Biennial Meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya. Before I left I thought it would be prudent to leave cameras in the field so they can do the job while I was away. Upon my return I learned there were runaway fires from Mozambique.

I got even more worried when I saw burnt areas on the map.  Three of my cameras were in those areas. I then went to visit the camera stations to investigate.

I managed to visit only two stations and today I’ll visit the last one. One of the cameras was damaged by the fire, but luckily the memory card was not damaged and this is one of the last leopard pictures we got out of it.

I don’t know if it is possible to fix this camera, but I will give it a try. The number of cameras lost due to non-demonic intrusions is three so far (I don’t know if elephant damage should be included in the category “non-demonic intrusions,” - just a personal feeling!).

As a result this puts a lot of pressure on our already limited budget.

We need 50 cameras for this project. Currently we only have seven. We will need a lot of help in order to reach that number.

A leopard captured by one of the camera traps that got burnt.
A leopard captured by one of the camera traps that got burnt.