Today was the day I finally had the unique pleasure of meeting the royalty of the reserve. I had known about them before I came out to Botswana and was anxiously waiting for my chance to be introduced. These two brothers command the attention of every park visitor and are clearly the main draw. Duma & Letotse, seven year old cheetah brothers, are permanent residents here at Mokolodi. It is my responsibility that they are fed and cared for. Their plight is a microcosm of the problems that conservationists currently face. They were found at just a few weeks old as helpless blind cubs. Their mother had been shot by a rancher for allegedly killing one of his cows. They were hand raised & bottled fed and therefore completely tame and habituated to humans. Without their mother to raise them, they never learned hunting skills necessary to survive in the wild. They would have certainly starved or been eaten by lions or hyenas. Cheetah cub mortality is extremely high, well over 50%, due to predation by other carnivores. Although they are not releasable back into the wild, they serve a crucial conservation service as ambassador cats for their species.
Cheetahs are Africa’s most endangered big cat. Estimates put the figure at 10,000 left on the continent (compared to 100,000 in 1970), of which Botswana & neighboring Namibia have the highest densities at about 3000 each. Obviously, they are the fastest terrestrial mammal but what is fascinating is that they can reach 65 mph in only 4 strides! Each stride can cover 22 feet and during a single stride, they are completely airborne at two different positions (when legs are extended and when legs are beneath them). They branched off the evolutionary tree of Felids much earlier than their cat relatives. They are built for speed rather than power and have special adaptations such as enlarged lungs, heart, adrenals, non-retractable claws, and longer limbs. Cheetahs have a unique dilemma. They often move out of nationally protected reserves because they cannot compete with lions and hyenas for food (they are chased off their own kills). They travel outside park boundaries onto ranch land where they may attack domestic livestock, as cattle, goats, & sheep make for easy prey. Farmers will trap, shoot, or poison the cheetahs in retaliation for their loss, since they view them as vermin and a threat to their livelihood. These cats are persecuted wherever they may roam, on rangelands or protected reserves.
Solution strategies for this conflict involve reaching out to the farming communities to convince the ranchers of two things: 1. the cats are worth more alive than dead as eco-tourism revenue and 2. to build more effective boma’s (corrals where livestock are herded into at night) to prevent predator attacks. The third item is hopeless to convince old school ranchers but it is effective on children who have not yet been indoctrinated with their parents’ ignorance. That is, cheetahs are graceful sophisticated works of art which should be revered as a national treasure. Historically, they have been kept by royalty as symbols of elegance and nobility due to their gentle non-aggressive nature. But attitudes here in Africa are hard to change. Especially some bunny-hugger honkey hippie with a whiney sentimentalist lecture confronting a hardened weather-beaten rancher who has laboured on his land in the tradition of his ancestors for decades.
“Take your dreadlocks & Birkenstocks and get the hell off my land” is a common response.
Poaching, although still a problem, is no longer the greatest threat to the survival of endangered species. During the 70’ & 80’s, poaching decimated numbers to the endangered level. The 90’s and into the new millennium, have ushered in an era of human population expansion and the resulting habitat loss for wildlife. We have elbowed them off their traditional lands and yet we are quick to pull the trigger when they dine on our goat. Peaceful co-habitation of rangelands between farmers & predators will be the single greatest key to the long-term survival of all predators. (there are other factors to their survival that I’ll discuss later such as loss of prey density and the “fencing of Africa” which blocks migration patterns and limits genetic diversity by preventing trans-national corridor movement and thereby creating isolated populations).
One of the many things I learned from my brief time at the Oakland Zoo was an insightful comment that Ann Warner, Director of Conservation, shared with me. That is, conservation leads to advocacy, which can lead to a political agenda. This is a slippery slope to tread and one that needs a tactful delicate navigator. Because, at the end of the day, who the hell am I to dispense advice on how to manage their wildlife. My arguments & pleas will fall on deaf ears in light of the track record of American wildlife. We have nearly domesticated are entire country, with the exception of a few small pockets of bears, wolves, cougars, etc. Late 19th century fur trappers killed off most wildlife. Not to mention the mass slaughter of 30 million head of bison. The hypocrisy is beyond shameful.
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