3. Results
3.1. Animal capture and telemetry effort
Ten leopards were captured (seven females and three males).
All animals recovered from immobilization and were released
with a VHF radio collar. The radio-collared leopards were followed
over five years (1994–1999) with each animal tracked for
amean of 25 ± 16 months. One male leopard had too few locations
(12) to be included in further analysis. In total, 3690 locations
were recorded from the remaining nine leopards. The
mean number of daily locations for each of these leopards
was 337 ± 234 (Table 1).
The mean percentage of available tracking days when
locations were acquired (not including M855 whose home
range was not estimated) was 44.5% and ranged from 31 to
73.7% (Table 1). This included days when no attempt was
made to acquire a location and days when, despite efforts,
no location was obtained.
3.2. Home range size
Adult female leopards (n = 6) had a mean annual 95% FK
home range of 26 ± 8.2 km2, a wet season home range (n = 5)
of 25.8 ± 7.8 km2 and a dry season home range (n = 6) of
29.2 km2 (±12.5). Mean 95% FK combined seasons’ home range
size for the two sub-adult females still living in their natal
areas was 29 ± 5.5 km2. A Wilcoxon paired rank t-test
(a = 0.05) revealed no significant difference (p = 0.06) between
wet and dry season adult female 95% FK home ranges. Of note
was an old adult female F025 who expanded her home range
from 30.9 km2 in year one to 76.7 km2 in year two followed by
a reduction to 14.4 km2 in year three, moving between back
and forth between the adjacent territories of F046 and F195.
Both sub-adult females resided within their mother’s