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Our present research is focussed on lions and leopards in three study sites. The Khorixas study site (10826 km2) is located in the northern Namib desert, previously known as Damaraland, and consists of an extremely arid habitat (annual rainfall 0-100mm) that stretches into the Skeleton Coast Park. This study is focussing on desert-adapted lions that frequent the Skeleton Coast Park, Torra Conservancy and the Palmwag tourism concession.

Etosha National Park has a long history of aerial game counts, the first experimental counts being conducted in the late 1960's. Only in the late 1980's were systematic sample counts introduced. A big advance in the actual procedure and analysis was made with the introduction of GPS and GIS software used since 1995. The 2000 census is the third census flown based on GPS transects and were GPS waypoints were recorded for sightings made.

Aerial census of the Etosha national Park during September 1973 with aid of a helicopter

Since completion of the fence on the Etosha's northern border the whole game park is now fenced in, causing management problems and more intensive research, also because the game park is an ecological unit no longer. Elephants breaking through the fence, doing damage on neighbouring farms and lions going through the breaks, still pose a problem in spite of the fact that a large part of the fence was re-enforced by adding three wires and that nature conservators spent more time keeping elephants away from the farms. Seven culprits had to be shot.

Game census - Etosha: June 1972.

Game count: Etosha, July 1972.

More research was done on game capture techniques and means and eland, springbok, gemsbok, zebra and rhino were captured and translocated successfully. More game was sold to farmers, namely 147 springbok, 46 gemsbok and 47 plains zebra. In addition 85 eland and some giraffe were taken from the Mangetti to the Waterberg Plateau Park, two rhinos to the Etosha National Park and 7 mountain zebra to the game park area of the Hardap Recreation Resort. The use of a helicopter once more proved essential for capturing game.