To everything – turn, turn, turn
There is a season – turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven
When Pete Seeger wrote this song in 1950, which was made famous by The Byrds 15 years later, he wasn’t the first to notice that for every thing to do there is a perfect time to do it. There is a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted – so says the book of Ecclesiastes, as found in the King James Version of the Bible. Building on several millennia of wisdom, the Cheetah Research Project also deems concentrated campaigns ideal for one of its core processes: To capturing cheetahs, there is a “season”! And a trapping campaign is currently kicking off in central Namibia.
For several research questions addressed in the CRP, long-term data and information obtained from free-ranging cheetahs in the core study area are essential. The analysis of the cat’s unique spatial ecology is made possible by repeated collaring of adult individuals to monitor their movement. Similarly, our analyses of reproduction, endocrinology, health status, pathogens, diet and immunology rely on blood and biological samples regularly collected from free-ranging cheetahs.
When team members Bettina, Ralf and Rebekka are on the move these days to set up cage traps, monitor their wildlife cameras and jump into action as soon as one trap signals a captured cheetah, they strengthen the spine of the project. Over the course of the next two months, they will systematically equip marking locations in central Namibia with traps in order to re-capture those cheetah males that wear a collar with fading battery power and to capture new study animals known from camera traps. Planning for uninterrupted, long-term data from cheetahs allows for in-depth analysis of their spatial behaviour that can correlated with environmental changes. Rebekka will also collect valuable samples and measurements for her PhD project within the CRP which addresses life history traits of males in the context of the mating system of cheetahs. One of the target animals was captured for the first time in 2013 and the current mission is to capture him for the 5th time!
So why there is a season for these activities – or is there a “season” at all? There are good reasons why trapping is best conducted in concentrated campaigns: The CRP is a highly mobile project despite being strongly rooted in our field stations in central Namibia. For various time periods, team members work abroad in Germany at the Leibniz-IZW, conduct studies together with cooperation partners, engage in important tasks at the institutes headquarter in Berlin (for example preparing for the important evaluation processes) or complete trainings and courses. When key members are present at the field stations, time is used well and data collections are carried out systematically. The Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated this dependence on the occasions when many team members can actually travel to the country, since these occasions have become a bit fewer.
Furthermore, capturing cheetahs in cage traps is to some degree dependent on weather conditions. During the rainy season gravel roads might become impassable so that the number of active traps is limited. Rain also shortens the time the cheetahs can stay in the cages before the team arrives – so does extreme heat. High temperatures during summer month also increase the risk of overheating during narcosis and trapping protocols have to be adapted. All in all, it is highly beneficial to concentrate the capturing of cheetahs to trapping campaigns for various reasons. They might not be “seasons” in the classical sense (regularly occurring and only dependent on time of the year) but certainly the many reasons, from practical and organisational to animal welfare, warrant that there is – turn, turn, turn – a time for every purpose under heaven ;)!
Stay tuned for updates from the unofficial CRP trapping season 2021; and try to get that earworm out of your head!