Friends of Conservation

Do you fly abroad? Help to offset the effects of this - click here to learn how. Image courtesy: Karen Livescu

Friends of Conservation
Kensington Charity Centre
Charles House
375 Kensington High St
London W14 8QH
Tel: 020 7603 5024
Email: focinfo@aol.com

Cheetah

The world's fastest land animal, the cheetah, is the most unique and specialized member of the cat family and can reach speeds of 70 mph. However, the sleek and long-legged cheetah is losing its race for survival. Once a common animal found on five continents, the cheetah is now an endangered species. FOC recently became the UK fundraising arm of the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) in their efforts to conserve cheetahs and their habitat. The CCF was founded in 1990 by Dr Laurie Marker and is dedicated to saving the cheetah from extinction. The CCF helped establish the Waterberg Conservancy, an area of 440,000 acres of private farmland where groups of neighbouring farmers jointly manage their natural resources and game to ensure long term conservation of the land. To read more about CCF and Dr Laurie Marker’s work, please click here.
The Conservancy allows wildlife, including cheetahs, to move freely across the land. CCF recognised that in order to help the cheetah, it was first necessary to understand them, their physiology, environment and their movement patterns and range. As a result, the CCF instigated one of the most intensive radio tracking projects seen in Africa so far. As part of CCF’s programme to determine the moving patters and home range (i.e. an area used by an individual animal to find food, a mate and care for their young), an area of commercial cattle and wildlife farms, spanning nearly 18,000km2 was chosen as a study area. 42 cheetahs were fitted with radio collars (27 males and 15 females) and tracked over a three year period. Laurie found that relative to those studied anywhere else, Namibian cheetahs have the largest home range, averaging 1,056km2 annually to 1,642km2 over a lifetime (3 times larger than the cheetahs found on the Serengeti). Ranges were found to be significantly smaller in the wet season (as food was more easily available) and that the animals intensively used 13% of their entire range. The average distance moved per day varied between the sexes, social groups and those with cubs. Single males travelled the furthest, with extreme weekly recordings of up to 40km. Cheetahs are usually not
found close together in great numbers. Loss of habitat and a limited geographical range (a small area in which to live) threaten the cheetah's survival. Low survivorship (few cheetahs live long or do not become adults) also affects cheetahs and makes them more vulnerable to human competition. High cub mortality, up to 90% in the wild, makes it difficult for the cheetah to recover when its population size decreases. The CCF continues with its research into the physiology and genetics of the cheetah. The Research and Education Centre now includes a veterinary clinic, a reproductive physiology laboratory and extensive holding facilities for orphaned and injured cheetah. In 2003, the CCF released 27 captured or orphaned cheetahs back into the wild and are currently caring for 31 Orphaned and “non-releasable” cheetahs. These are cheetahs that need to be taken in due to poor health or injuries that would not heal by themselves. The latest arrivals were three young orphaned cubs that had been displayed as a tourist attraction and fed by their captors on a diet of mealie-meal. Calcium is an important element for growing cubs and having lacked it for several months the cubs had very brittle bones – so much so that any attempt to play resulted in breaks and fractures. Unfortunately, one of the cubs did not survive. However, the other two cubs are well on the road to recovery, although still in confinement until their bones strengthen.