Chisomo M’hango is a trainee field ecologist at Musekese Conservation (MC), a nonprofit whose research station is located deep inside the Musekese-Lumbeya section of Zambia’s Kafue National Park. M’hango and her colleagues have captured images of 95 individual leopards — or 9 leopards per 100 square kilometers (38.6 square miles) in some parts of the study area. It represents one of the highest densities of this vulnerable species in Southern Africa. Leopards aren’t the only carnivores studied by staff members like M’hango. Musekese-Lumbeya is home to four other charismatic carnivores — spotted hyenas, African wild dogs, lions and cheetahs. Camera trap surveys, monitoring of individual animals, and citizen science projects that M’hango and MC are helping to run in collaboration with other research partners are providing promising signs on the recovery of leopards, wild dogs and lions. Mongabay spoke to M’hango at MC’s research center on the banks of the Kafue River in late May 2025. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Chisomo M’hango conducting fieldwork in the Musekese Lumbeya section of Kafue National Park. Image courtesy of Musekese Conservation. Mongabay: I understand that this area of Kafue National Park is an important leopard stronghold. Why is that? Chisomo M’hango: We have an ongoing project looking into this. We started our camera trapping efforts in 2022 to establish baseline estimates of leopard populations. We are now at a stage where we have enough data to be able to start looking into what variables are creating such an…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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