A mother cheetah with her cubs in the wild.

Moving Quickly To Save The World’s Fastest Animal

The Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia pioneered a model to keep wild cheetahs in the wild, and are now leading Africa’s fight against the illegal pet trade.

Can captive cheetahs be taught to hunt and return to live in the wild?

This was the question that first brought American-born Dr. Laurie Marker to Namibia from Oregon, where she ran the veterinary clinic at a wildlife park. In the 1970s, she had already pioneered a captive breeding program there, contributing significantly to what little was known at the time about cheetahs and their behavior. The next step was to travel to the arid southern African country with a cheetah that had been born in captivity and teach her to hunt. Dr. Marker was successful in her effort to draw out the cat’s prey instincts, but she was shocked to learn about the dire state of Namibia’s wild cheetahs, who were being killed in large numbers—as many as 900 a year. When she asked a local farmer about it, he said it was in retribution for cheetahs attacking their livestock and coming into conflict with herding communities.

“I felt someone had to do something to save these animals,” Dr. Marker says. So, she moved to Namibia and started the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) in 1991, dedicating herself to studying and protecting cheetahs in the wild. In the years since, the organization has established a model to rescue, rehabilitate, and release captive cheetahs back into natural habitats; it has created conservancies and community programs “to teach farmers that they can live in harmony with nature,” as Dr. Marker puts it; and conducted groundbreaking genetics research and breeding programs. CCF is also on the front lines of the fight against one of the gravest threats facing the planet’s remaining cheetahs: the illegal pet trade.

When cheetahs are rescued from the illegal wildlife trade, they are kept in quarantine to ensure no illnesses are transmitted.

A Successful Model In Namibia

Once found throughout Africa, India and the Middle East, cheetahs face numerous threats, including habitat loss, conflict with humans, and the illegal wildlife trade. Roughly 90% of the world’s cheetah population has been lost over the last century. Namibia, with roughly half of the estimated 7,000 cheetahs remaining globally, is known as the cheetah capital of the world. That’s partly because its vast open landscape provides ideal habitat for the earth’s fastest land mammal, which can reach speeds of up to 70 miles per hour. But those natural spaces have been shrinking in recent decades due to the spread of farming, industry, and overuse of natural resources. Cheetahs face stiff competition from other predators on reserves, and when they move outside of protected lands, they face conflict with livestock farmers, who might kill or trap the cheetah that has attacked their goat or sheep.

To resolve this conflict, CCF pioneered a livestock guarding dog program, in which they breed and place Anatolian Shepherds with the farmers to protect their livestock from predation. Begun 30 years ago, this program has saved 458 cheetahs annually, roughly 6.11% of the cheetah population. Relatedly, their Future Farmers of Africa program has trained more than 10,000 locals in predator-friendly livestock management techniques as well as teaching them principles of business and conservation.

To care for cheetahs that CCF has rescued from conflict and other deadly scenarios—who often arrive orphaned, injured, or with other medical issues—CCF runs a veterinary facility at their Namibian HQ, as well as a 160,000-acre private reserve, where rehabilitated cheetahs are released to live something resembling a normal life. A few do make it fully back into the wild. “It’s difficult to achieve, but it’s possible,” Dr. Marker says. Each cheetah that comes to them is evaluated for rehabilitation and release. Once a cub reaches two to three years of age, they’re moved progressively into a larger reserves, where they can habituate and learn how to hunt. Over nearly 30 years, CCF has put close to 700 cheetahs back into the landscape, and about 100 of those into the wild itself.

Once quarantine is concluded, the cheetahs are moved into expansive outside habitats where they can view their natural surroundings.

The Horn Of Africa & The Illegal Wildlife Trade

All of these learnings from the last 30 years are proving essential across the continent in the Horn of Africa, a flashpoint in the illegal wildlife trade. In this region near the Red Sea, large numbers of cheetah cubs are being taken from their dens and the mothers are often killed so the cubs can be trafficked into the Middle East, where they are kept as pets. The government of the breakaway democratic country of Somaliland, recognizing the increase in trafficking from neighboring countries through their borders, are working with CCF to address the problem.

“We’ve had to move very quickly,” Dr. Marker says. Five years ago, CCF developed a Cheetah Rescue and Conservation Center in Hargesia, Somaliland, including a safe house and veterinary clinic for cheetah cubs confiscated from the illegal pet trade. They have since added four more safe houses and 100-acre sanctuary on land donated by the government. Cubs that are intercepted by law enforcement or the ministry of wildlife are brought to CCF, whose vets are on standby to assess them and treat the small cats for injury, dehydration, malnutrition, and disease. “Most have serious health issues, because the people who take them don’t feed them, or give them human foods and goat’s milk, which messes them up,” Dr. Marker says. “Or they keep them around other domestic animals or livestock that haven’t been vaccinated or dewormed, or, because of the way that they were restrained, they have physical abnormalities that require intense medical care.” A number of these extremely vulnerable cubs do not survive. But many do make it, and the operation has helped more than 150 cubs and currently has about 100 cats in its care.

CCF’s work in Somaliland also extends to high-tech detective work to figure out the source of the trafficking, scrutinizing the soil isotopes in the cubs’ hair samples to try to pinpoint their origins. “Once we start learning about where they’re from, we can help stop it from happening with our human-wildlife conflict and education programs,” Dr. Marker says.

Taken from their mothers so young, these hand-raised cubs typically cannot be returned to the wild, because they did not learn the necessary survival skills from their mother and are typically in poor health. “But it’s not out of the question,” Dr. Marker says.

Plans are in the works to fence roughly 50,000 hectares (about 3,000 acres), which would expand the cheetahs’ habitat and give them room to live more natural, wild lives, maybe even return to the wilderness.

Chantecaille’s donation from our Fall 24 Cheetah Collection will support CCF’s efforts to provide 24/7 care for the rescued cubs, including providing proper nutrition, parasite control, and medications, as well as a new education center to build awareness among local communities about methods for peaceful coexistence and the importance of leaving wild cheetahs in the wild.

“I feel my life has come full circle,” Dr. Marker says. I started in the ‘70s with my research project in Namibia, teaching a cheetah how to hunt to find out if a captive cheetah could go back out into the wild. And today, we're doing it. It remains the baseline of our work,” she continues. “To keep the wild wild.”