The fastest land mammal on Earth is losing the ultimate race – the race for survival.
Listed as Vulnerable in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, there are fewer than
10,000 cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) remaining worldwide, including fewer than 600 in South Africa. To make matters worse, the population trend is decreasing, predominantly due to habitat loss and fragmentation, conflict with farmers and ranchers, and competition with other large predators, such as lions. In the Karoo, it is estimated that the last wild cheetah in the area was seen in the 1870s. Wrongly accused of being a threat to livestock (studies in Namibia show that cheetah are only responsible for 3% of livestock losses to predators), they were hunted and persecuted across the Eastern Cape to such an extent that they became locally extinct.
This state of affairs lasted until 2003, when Samara made history by reintroducing cheetah as apex predator in the Karoo landscape. Starting with just three individuals, Samara’s cheetah programme has been a huge success. The objective of the project is not specifically to breed cheetah, but rather to recreate the optimal conditions for the survival of this endangered species in its rightful habitat. As such, Samara has purposefully held back from reintroducing lion onto the reserve for a number of years. Evidence from the short-grass plains of the Serengeti has shown that cheetah juvenile mortality can be as high as 95%, mostly due to predation by lions and spotted hyena. In the absence of competition, the Samara cheetah population has flourished to such an extent that individuals have been made available to other conservation areas, most notably the Mountain Zebra National Park near Cradock. Crucially, Samara works closely with university departments and other conservation bodies to ensure that these highly endangered big cats are given the best chance of survival.
The cheetah species exhibits a very low level of genetic diversity when compared to other felids, which suggests that it may have suffered one or more catastrophic population bottlenecks in the past, the first of which probably occurred during the late Pleistocene extinctions 10,000 years ago. Subsequent inbreeding among the few survivors has meant that cheetah today exhibit much lower levels of genetic diversity than other mammals. Typically, related individuals of a species share 80% of the same genes. In cheetah this rises to 99%, causing problems with rates of survival and susceptibility to disease. It also means that cheetah are less adaptable to sudden changes in their environment, such as those linked to climate change, which can affect temperature ranges, precipitation patterns, and the habitat ranges of their prey species. In order to minimize the negative impacts of this lack of genetic diversity, Samara periodically swaps individuals with other reserves, in order to ensure as much genetic variety as possible within such a constricted population.
