Cheetah Conservation in Namibia

Since we visited the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) near Otjiwarongo, Namibia, in 2008, there have been many achievements of conservation interest and two in particular that caught my eye:

1. Cheetahs have been successfully reintroduced to an area of southern Namibia where they had long been absent, and

2. A "Bush Project" is up and running. The Bush Project is described thus on the CCF Web site (http://www.cheetah.org/?nd=ccf_bush_project):

“The purpose of the Bush Project is to create a viable market for biomass products derived in environmentally and socially appropriate means. This will encourage the removal of excess bush from Namibian farmlands. Depending on the results of this pilot project, habitat restoration efforts could be vastly scaled up to restore cheetah habitat on an ecologically appropriate scale.”

This is the place where Hannah and I took a large box of derelict but good cameras and other optics and electronics as a donation from members of the Association of Professional Biologists of British Columbia. CCF uses the cameras as camera traps for cheetah research.

The whole country around Otjiwarongo and much of northern Namibia is covered with thorn-scrub brush, apparently not a natural situation that resulted from farmers putting out fires over many decades. CCF developed technology to cut up the brush and compact it into firewood. Since the brush is always growing, it is a never-ending supply. Local people can operate it and it gives them a business. It improves the land for wildlife (we saw 7 species of antelopes there!), and for livestock. More antelopes means more cheetahs. Also, since cheetahs hunt by pursuit on flat grassland, it is not just the forage for antelopes (hence, prey for cheetahs), but the cleared land itself that helps cheetahs hunt. So it is win-win-win-win situation.

Namibia is the only country in the world with a healthy, wild, and expanding cheetah population outside of nature reserves, and that is mainly due to the work of Dr. Laurie Marker and her Cheetah Conservation Fund. Her groups works with ranchers and farmers to make their properties “cheetah friendly,” mainly with respect to design and location of fences, but also in not poisoning or otherwise killing cheetahs. When farmers, game wardens or others capture cheetahs alive, they bring them into CCF for rehabilitation and eventual release. Also, a lot of ranches are also game farms (but they call them wildlife reserves) that offer guided hunts. So Namibia is also one of the few countries that allows hunting of cheetahs, because it has a healthy population and the ranchers are involved in their conservation. That makes it a win-win-win-win-win situation.

Plus, the CCF is temporary home to a revolving-door of wildlife researchers who are investigating ecology of not just cheetahs, but also brown hyenas and many other species. So it is a win-win-win-win-win-win situaiton.