The Bateleurs have continued supporting the Cape Leopard Trust with ongoing monitoring missions.  The most recent of these took place on 06 February, when Johan Ferreira flew Quinton Martins to track his leopard. 

Following the flight Quinton wrote to us saying -: "Just to thank you and Johan for the amazing flight on Monday. We managed to track the old bugger down, got very close - BUT - did not see him. He in fact sneaked past us at one point. Johan, once again, did an AMAZING job in helping me do the downloads - I cannot wait till we have a few more leopards collared! Thanks again."

Later, Quinton sent us the following report -:

"The 50/50 film crew came out to finish up with its programme covering the work of the Cape Leopard Trust.  We had arranged an early Bateleurs-sponsored flight with pilot Johan Ferreira, the intention being to get a last GPS fix on  "Houdini" so that we could try to track him later in the morning.

Johan and I took off at about 06h30, after an hour's rough drive to his place.  The Scout is such an awesome aircraft for tracking, and Johan is a superb pilot.  It was a great flight and we picked up a signal from our leopard within the first fifteen minutes.  Having located him, I downloaded the past four week's GPS fixes, and then we headed home.   The flight was amazing and the data collected is proving to be fantastic.  762 GPS fixes in the past six months.  Amazing. 

Then on the 23rd February we had some astonishing luck.  I managed to capture "Johan", our most well-known leopard, in a cage trap."