A cheetah in full stride

Marcy has cheetah print fingernails. In any other situation this would be a little disconcerting, but in this context it signifies not eccentric style but something more powerful, a passion for the most endangered of Africa’s big cats; the cheetah.

Marcy is an American environmental photo-journalist whose work on cheetahs and human predator coexistence in Africa overlapped with NHU Africa at the Cheetah outreach programme, where NHU’s Cheetah Diaries is being filmed. Her enthusiasm for the subject of cheetahs was clear from our correspondence and it was in fact her that spotted the cheetah skin being illegally sold in Greenmarket square last week (see the video here). I got hold of Marcy to discuss her work in Southern Africa and the plight of the world’s fastest mammal.

Chris: Tell us a little bit about your work here in Southern Africa

Marcy: This is what I call phase one, the point of this project is not to be a hit and run. With this story I plan to follow up and I plan to come back.  So I have been in Southern Africa for three and a half months, starting in Botswana for a month where I worked with Cheetah Conservation Botswana. I did some safaris and talked to a lot of experienced locals in Maun, and from there I moved onto Namibia and I worked with the N/a’ankusê organisation, where we tracked the cheetah in the wild in the Namib desert and I observed what they were doing with their research and community outreach.

A wild cheetah relaxing

There are some fascinating new developments in foot imprinting software, where they are having their cheetah walk across a bed of fluffed up earth in order to get the footprint of the cheetah foot, and I hate to say it but basically mimics what the Bushmen already know. It’s fascinating. So N/a’ankusê is doing some interesting things. And then moving on to Africat in Okonjima, this is still in Namibia, and speaking with them and seeing their shift towards an education focus.  And of course no visit would be complete without visiting the cheetah conservation fund in Otjiwarongo. And there speaking with their volunteers, speaking with Dr Laurie Marker and seeing what they are about with their programmes, so a month in Botswana, a month in Namibia and then South Africa, and I have been here for six weeks and I have worked with Cheetah outreach and that’s been amazing. In fact I went on the road with Cyril, who is one of their researchers who checks up on the dog programme in the North West province so we were on the road together for about a week, way up in parts of South Africa that if I tell a South African national I was in Bray, they’re like “Bray where?” It’s 200m from the Botswana border, so we were based in the bottom tail of the Kalahari and delivering Anatolian Shepard puppies and checking up on existing dogs and talking with farmers and learning firsthand what those experiences are, where the issues are, and it’s complicated.

Chris: So for the everyday person, how would you describe the crux of the issue around cheetah conservation and the threats towards cheetahs in the wild?

Marcy: The ultimate threat is man. I don’t want to paint with a broad brush by saying that people are terrible, there are always a few bad apples, but because cheetahs tend to live on farmland they come into conflict (with people), they get blamed for a lot of things as well because they hunt in the day, so if a farmer has a loss he might see a cheetah and blame it on that animal. You know farming is very difficult and very stressful and at times the last straw is when a predator takes that livestock, given all the stresses that that farmer has. And the farms have maybe been there for generations…Ultimately the main problem, (well there are many problems cheetahs have) the main problem is humans.

An Anatolian puppy

Chris: What are some of the other problems cheetahs face?

Marcy: They are genetically similar to each other. So they don’t have (and I am not a scientist so please don’t quote me, there are ways to research this!) the strongest constitution, they are basically so genetically similar that you could take a skin graft from a cheetah in South Africa and graft it onto a cheetah in Kenya and it will take. So you have that, and you have a really high infant mortality rate, the infants might starve, they might get killed by hyena or leopard or lion, so it’s very difficult in the wild for them and they have stiff competition from other predators in the wild. They are the world’s oldest cat; they are a 4 million year old breed and they are built for running, they are not built for combat. So even though when we see the cheetah we see this huge cat, it is actually a small cat on the big cat scale. So they have this fragility, but when you see them in the wild and they are growling and hissing and spitting you don’t think they are fragile at all!

Chris: What are the realities of Cheetah population numbers, can you give us an estimate of how many there are in the wild and how many are left in South Africa?
Marcy: well we tend to not want to give numbers because we don’t really know. They are low. The world’s population of cheetah has dropped by 90% in the last 100 years. You have the highest population in Namibia, then Botswana, then South Africa. I don’t know if it is more than a thousand in the wild and I don’t really know those numbers but it is low and they are rare. If you talk to some farmers they may say that maybe their grandfather could tell you that he saw a cheetah on his farm. Nobody sees cheetahs now. It’s very rare, and I made a point of asking lots of people and people don’t see them. They don’t see them and that’s indicative of a problem, because if you look at their range, it’s all over Southern Africa, but they are very scarce in South Africa.

Chris: Wow, okay well that’s certainly an important issue. If people would like to find out more, where can they go for more info and to see your work around cheetahs?

Marcy; Sure, I can direct them to my site, which is cheetah-watch.com and there are also a wealth of sites, there is www.cheetah.org which is the cheetah conservation funds site, and http://www.cheetahbotswana.com/ if you go to these sites you will see information links and it can feel overwhelming. Just to give you a background I studied for three years straight, writing grants and going to events and talking to people before I came to Africa, and once I hit the ground here and started really talking to people it was like I could throw out everything I read because of the experience of being on the ground. I think it is hard for people to come to Africa, It’s a long way, I understand that, and that’s our job as media producers to bring this message home in the best way we can, but I can’t stress enough that if you have the opportunity to come here, do it. Talk to people. Because conservation is a about people, for the animals it’s not their problem, we are the ones that are giving them the issues.

Chris: that’s a great point, so in a sentence what would you like to say to the public out there, both South African and international, what’s your advice. If people want to help save cheetahs, is it about education. What’s it really about?

Marcy: it’s about coexistence. Coexistence is the key word. Coexistence is possible.

Chris: Thank you very much!

Click HERE For more info on cheetah genetic similiarity and survivorship

Namibian sunset

Ancient Bushman knowledge