A snapshot of stunning Zambian wildlife
It’s always exciting to see what comes back from Shinganda’s camera trap surveys in Zambia! NatureSpy has been in partnership with Shinganda Wildlife Wilderness since 2019.
Each year, Shinganda run a camera trap survey, primarily to understand mammal presence in the area, which is home to elephants, leopards, cheetahs and many more stunning species. In this blog, we’ve been treated to a snapshot of wildlife from the first 40 days of camera trap surveying at Shinganda this year…
Shinganda Wildlife Wilderness is a wildlife restoration project in Zambia, spanning across a protected area of 200km2. With a wildlife corridor linking to Kafue National Park, Shinganda provides essential habitats and protection for wildlife and is an integral part of wider conservation efforts in the Greater Kafue Ecosystem.
NatureSpy has been working in partnership with Shinganda since 2019, supporting the project with their camera trap surveys to build knowledge of wildlife presence in the area and monitor potential hotspots for poachers.
Shinganda run a mammal survey with 15 camera traps every year, primarily to capture presence/absence data. This year, the project ran a 6-month survey which is just coming to an end, so the team will have plenty of footage to be sorting through!
In the meantime, we’ve been treated to a snapshot of this survey and have received footage from 40 days of camera activity between July and August 2022. It’s incredible to see the diversity of wildlife the cameras have picked up in just this short period! Allisdair MacDonald from the project explains…
“Camera traps recorded the presence of a very wide range of mammals, with a total of 28 species (excluding shrews, bats and small rodents) identified from the images captured. Species documented during the short survey includes a range of animals from cane rats to elephants. Probably the most exciting new species record were images captured of a cheetah on Shinganda. This is the first time that photographs of this rare and endangered species have been obtained on Shinganda. The cameras also confirmed the ongoing presence of wide-ranging species like African wild dogs, resident species like leopard, as well as some of the smaller cats like serval and caracal. The camera trap survey confirmed that populations of antelope, like kudu and sable antelope are responding well to protection provided by Shinganda’s anti-poaching work, with numbers of these species steadily increasing. Shinganda is extremely grateful to NatureSpy, without whose support, this work would not be possible.”
Serval on game trail
Kudu bull, cows and calves at sundown
Caracal searching for food
Cane rat mother and young
African wild dog hunting
Sable antelope bull at night
Camera install team!
In the mood for more Zambian wildlife? Head over to our project pages to learn more about Shinganda's vital wildlife conservation work. You can also keep up to date with the project over on Instagram.
Shinganda Wildlife Wilderness use Browning Recon Force Advantage camera traps. This is a robust camera that can handle the heat of Zambia while producing excellent quality images. The latest model in the Recon Force camera range is the Browning Recon Force Elite HP5, which is one of our current favourites at NatureSpy!
The team at Shinganda installing a Browning camera trap
