Rehabilitating the Cheetah

Research projects that focus on the rehabilitation and release of large predators are uniquely challenging due to the types of threats that predators face in the wild. For cheetahs, human-wildlife conflict, habitat loss, and the illegal wildlife/pet trade are the three main threats causing the endangerment of the species across its range. Cheetahs often become injured or orphaned due to one or more of these threats. The Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) often receives these animals at our rehabilitation facility in Namibia. The protocol CCF has developed for the rehabilitation and release of wild-born, orphaned cheetahs has now been published in the journal Oryx, entitled Recommendations for the rehabilitation and release of wild-born, captive-raised cheetah: the importance of pre- and post-release management for optimizing survival by Eli Walker, Stijn Verschueren, Anne Schmidt-Kuentzel, and Laurie Marker.

The paper published in February 2022 by Oryx, compiles the past 15 years of research on the rehabilitation and release of wild caught, orphan cheetahs in Namibia. The origin of this research extends back to the 1970’s beginning with my work in South West Africa, which is now the country of Namibia. As part of a research project with Wildlife Safari (a zoological park in Oregon, USA), I came to Africa to determine whether a captive born cheetah could learn to hunt.

The work continued in 1991 when I founded CCF, moving to the newly formed country of Namibia. CCF’s first goal was to keep cheetahs from being removed from the wild by working to address human-wildlife conflict within the farming community. This conflict had resulted in the loss of over 800 cheetahs per year the previous decade. Many of the cheetahs that were dying were young and orphaned cubs whose mothers had been trapped or killed. We built our rescue and rehabilitation facility and began the work to put rehabbed cheetahs back into the wild. CCF’s programs have grown over the years, and we’ve been able to address the main threats to the cheetah, bringing the plight of the cheetah into popular awareness in Namibia and around the world.

Across the cheetah’s range the species is still being removed from the wild at an alarming rate. Because the population of cheetahs has diminished to only 7,100 adults and adolescents remaining in 9% of their historic range, the rehabilitation and release of injured and orphaned cheetahs could be an important part of the conservation strategy. To bring our long history of successful rehabilitation and release to our range wide partners, CCF has developed a system of repeatable protocols in Recommendations for the rehabilitation and release of wild-born, captive-raised cheetah: the importance of pre- and post-release management for optimizing survival. Our study showed high success rates of release candidates in achieving independence (75-96%) and survival estimates were like wild counterparts. Moreover, there was evidence of successful reproductive events, an important measure of release success.