Cheetah conservation
Despite a concerted worldwide awareness that cheetahs hover on the brink of extinction, cheetah populations continue to decline.
The cheetah's natural range is approximately 11,000 hectares, and the main threat facing cheetahs is the systemic conversion of land to agriculture and farming, expansion of human settlements, and the associated degredation of the landscape. Being a specialised hunter, cheetahs cannot easily adapt to fences strung across the open plains, packs of hunting dogs, and cruel gintraps set for marauding predators of the night.
The estimated population of wild cheetahs in South Africa is 500 animals. These cheetahs roam free, covering vast tracks of land to hunt their prey, congregating around play trees, and carrying with them, the secrets of survival in a harsh landscape. These populations represent the last remaining free cheetahs in South Africa, a tiny gene-pool and a population which continues to decline despite the best efforts to introduce non-lethal methods of predator management, and encourage farmers to get behind cheetah conservation and preserve the spirit of the savannah. The problem of declining wild populations is not only relevant to South Africa. In at least 11 countries where cheetahs occur today, research is showing that conditions are becoming unsuitable for survival of this species and it is estimated that these populations of cheetah surrounding by growing human mass, will die out within the next decade.
A collective initiative by several large game reserves has seen free-roaming cheetahs occuring within large fenced game reserves being managed as a meta-population. These cheetahs who still retain the skills for surival in the wild, are the fall-back plan should wild populations plummet. But in order to maintain a healthy meta-population takes a co-ordinated, selfless effort, and cheetahs need space to survive - space, and lots of it. Steve Irwing said before his death that if you wanted to contribute towards conservation, buy land - land where animals have a chance to roam free, is the only hope for cheetahs in the long-term.
Captive-bred cheetahs are used to raise awareness of the species and introduce farmers to non-lethal methods of predator management. They are also used, as an iconic species, to instil a greater respect and love of the environment in our communities, to preserve our heritage for future generations, and to show that all species, including humans, cannot exist in a vacum. We all need a healthy eco-system and environment to flourish and survive. Captive-breeding programs, those who are for conservation purposes, become the space-bank of the cheetah's gene-pool, so that one day, perhaps in the future, cheetahs can be re-introduced to reclaimed land.
