A Place for Cheetahs | National Geographic

The last thing we want to do is lose this cat after a long journey and all this effort and all the permitting and everything that's gone into getting him here. Yeah, and if you've got a dart gun, right, running full here into this fence. So these are four sidebars: three females and a male. So you'll notice that the male is the larger.

I'm the cheetah meta population coordinator for the Endangered Wildlife Trust. But if you want to really break it down into simpler terms, I'm a cheetah matchmaker. So I effectively identify which cheetah are related to each other to swap individuals between these reserves to prevent inbreeding. [Music]

Cheetah have been on the receiving end of a bad relationship with human beings for 13,000 years, and the one way to deal with that issue is to effectively fence humans out and fence the wildlife in. In the last 100 years, the human population has increased 20-fold on the continent. South Africa is, of course, Africa's most developed country, so it's particularly difficult for cheetah to traverse the South African landscape. That's why we have such a dire need to utilize this approach.

A cheetah? Yeah, it's an adult. You can look. Yeah, I don't go for it. Yeah, and the male is definitely awake. [Music]

This is the first time that conservation officials have really attempted to implement managed meta populations, and we've made a lot of mistakes in the process. We've learned that it's not easy to relocate wildlife. There's a lot of urgency, you know. It's always you are always on the go, go, go. Look at that, there's the chat. Oh, thank goodness. I was going 120! Thank goodness! Is that my brother who got stopped there?

When we relocate cheetah, it often is a good 20-hour drive. That animal is in the back of your vehicle, and adrenaline's pumping. It can be stressful work. Sometimes we've got a big thunderstorm ahead of us, so we're quickly having to mobilize and cover up these openings on top of the crates here. Because if these cheetah get wet and trans, especially with the wind blowing onto them, they could pick up pneumonia or something like that. So we're going to cover this up, and then hopefully by the time we hit that approaching storm, these cheetah are going to be able to stay dry. But nothing can come in from the front. There's enough ventilation from the sides. We're all good.

All right, cheetah have been eradicated from 91% of their historical range in Africa. Recently, their numbers dipped down to 7,000. This implies that they are likely to be upgraded to endangered status. [Music]

We as humans have a responsibility to protect our wildlife. You have certain reserves where the cheetah population has actually gone extinct. I don't enjoy transporting cheetah over large distances in such confined environments, but this approach is undoubtedly working. We now have successfully reintroduced cheetah into 53 reserves across the country.

I must be honest, I still go through bouts of nervousness. We've entered a bit of a tricky situation with this young, cyber adult male. He seems to be a little stressed in that confined transport crate. So, um, you know, if that behavior persists, we're gonna have to make a very difficult call of possibly releasing him at nighttime. During emergencies, we sometimes have to make the hardcore decision of releasing at night. When we do that, we try to eliminate the boma as much as possible with vehicles.

Yeah, boma is a holding facility. It's fully electrified, so the cheetah cannot get out of there. It's a real Fort Knox. If he starts running into the sides of the boma, then we'll be left with no option but to immobilize him again.

So the first thing we wanted to do is turn around and try to fight us. [Music]

The eyes looking good, nice and relaxed. To be part of the only project that is seeing an increase in cheetah numbers, it's an absolute privilege. I'm optimistic that this technique will start to be used in East Africa. It will go to Central Africa, it'll go to West Africa, hopefully North Africa, and possibly even Asia in the future. [Music]