In the article “ The Race to Save Cheetahs” by Suzanne Zimbler we learned about cheetahs’ race to survive.
The cheetah, fast, cute and in peril! The cheetah may be fast but speed is not the same thing as being unbeatable. How many cheetahs do you think are left in the world, a million or one hundred million? No, only about ten thousand are left. Just think, a little over one hundred years ago there were about one hundred thousand cheetahs. So from then to now, we lost about ninety thousand cheetahs!!
Now whom can we blame, Prof. Plum, Mrs. Peacock, or hunters, poachers, and farmers? (answer: Poachers hunters, and farmers!) Poachers captured them to sell them as pets. Well that was a bad idea in the first place because people might say, “Mr. Whiskers, don’t maul mommy!” Hunters murdered them for sport. Farmers killed them to protect their farm animals.
Poaching is now illegal, but what about the farmers? Laurie Marker, the founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) who has studied cheetahs for close to forty years had an idea. The farmers in Namibia were killing cheetahs. (Light bulb!) For thousands of years the farmers in Turkey used dogs called Anatolian shepherds to protect their animals. Why not continue to do that? Marker says “we’ve stopped the killing and doubled the country’s cheetah population.” But there is more. Farmers keep too much of their livestock in one place for a long time. That leads to overgrazing, and with no grass a ton of animals including the ones that the cheetahs eat go kaput. That means the cheetahs will starve. In Namibia, the CCF is helping the farmers by teaching them how to handle their livestock without hurting the land. Marker says the goal is for people, livestock, and cheetahs to live together in peace.
As you can see, the cheetah population has decreased, but the CCF’s cause is not hopeless and the cheetahs’ numbers are rising.
The World According to Brady 