Cheetah: Race Against Time

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Once some 100,000 cheetahs roamed across Africa and Asia, but habitat loss, loss of prey and eradication by humans has led to a severe population decline. Today, a mere 12,000 cheetahs remain in the wild. On this Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom special, wildlife expert Peter Gros travels to Namibia, the "Cheetah Capital of the World," to investigate efforts to turn the tide on the cat's decline.

Peter arrives at the Cheetah Conservation Fund's International Research and Education Center in central Namibia, where Dr. Laurie Marker is working to protect the local cheetah population. Ninety percent of Namibia's 2,500 cheetahs live on commercial livestock farmland due to pressures from other predators in preserves and protected areas. This sharing of land and resources with ranches has led to conflict, with the cheetah on the losing end.

Peter and Laurie examine ways to help ranchers co-exist with cheetahs. They discover through scat samples that the cheetahs are preying almost exclusively on wild antelope, but this doesn't keep ranchers from trapping and shooting them on sight. Laurie implements a program where Anatolian shepherds, the ideal guard dogs, help scare cheetahs away from livestock, thereby keeping conflicts with ranchers to a minimum.

Cheetah: Race Against Time is a fascinating look at a successful wildlife conservation program that big cat lovers won't want to miss.