Cellphone Safari

Article

Professor Wouter van Hoven of the University of Pretoria’s Center for Wildlife Management says getting a text message from a leopard is “a great ice-breaker in the pub”. Van Hoven is heading up a project that tracks three leopards in the Waterberg region of South Africa’s Limpopo Province, using a combination of cellphone and GPS. African Wildlife Tracking, headed by Martin Haupt, is the company behind the wireless animal tracking system that Van Hoven is using in his leopard project. Getting a text message from a leopard – or an elephant, cheetah, rhino or lion – is increasingly frequent in South Africa. Many game reserves or conservation areas have wild animals that are fitted with collared tracking devices.