NAMIBIA DIARY

Slot 2 brought the expedition to a climactic end with the capture of this year's sixth cheetah. After Ursula's birthday cheetah last week, expectations were high for me to produce something exciting for the box-trap team in recognition of my 31 years. I thought the porcupine release from the penultimate trap would be enough to satisfy this demand, so I was more than a little surprised when we came across our big cat friend in the last trap. Josef picked up leopard spoor just by the trap, so we had a moment's hesitation establishing the cat's identity (!) ... but he is now known as cheetah W021, a 40kg male, captured once before in May 2004, and thought to be the son of the collared cheetah W014 who we follow on the telemetry. Once we had succeeded persuading him to move to his holding cage, we placed a couple more traps around his tree on the off chance that he formed part of a coalition. With no further captures by Friday morning, we proceeded with the darting, anaesthetising and sampling procedures. It was discovered that he had quite a large wound where he had been caught in a snare, though this was healing well and his weight was normal for his age. A real show-biz cheetah, he was more than happy to pose for the group upon recovery before shooting off in to the bush.With the weather remaining fine in the evening, we ended the afternoon activities a little early to rendez-vous up at telemetry point no. 2 from where we could get a great view of the surrounding plains and a last Namibian sunset. The team members having just departed, this brings the expedition for spring2005 to a close, so many thanks to everybody for contributing to making it a success. Thanks to the cheetahs too. I'm looking forward to helping Harald and Birgit with the establishment of their new study-site for autumn of this year. David Moore