i have been wondering recently how many cheetahs are in the delta and linyanti regions. whenever i read trip reports and news of camps in botswana, i rarely ever here of sightings of cheetah outside of the steroid boys at mombo and the 3 bros in the savuti area (and i read recently that one of them has been injured and may not make it). i know of a couple females in the mombo area as well as a couple near chitabe but i just dont seem to hear that much about sightings (compared to leopards and lions or even wild dogs for that matter) and it makes me wonder why there arent more of these beautiful cats in northern botswana. this question has been puzzling to me. anyone have similar thoughts or refutations (i hope im wrong and actually there are plenty, they just dont get the air time that the famous guys do)?

There are no good stats on the state of the cheetah in Botswana.
Cheetah Conservation Botswana is a new organization (and an excellent one) but a census has never been done.
They are trying to get one underway now. It is very likely that Botswana has the 2nd highest population of cheetahs of any country...and it might actually have as many as Namibia (the accepted number1). There are just not stats! However most cheetahs are actually outside the parks and reserves on private or communal land. The same is true in Namibia. It might be that competition from lions and leopards--and possibly wild dog-- is greater in the reserves. (I saw wild dog with a kill at Chitabe that the guide surmised might have been stolen from a cheetah. Interestingly, the next day, we found a female cheetah right after she had dragged a new kill under some bushes to eat it out of way of circling vultures and jackals. One of the reasons that I really like the Chitabe area!)

I highly recommend a visit to www.cheetahbotswana.com if you are interested in cheetahs and concerned about their future. (Yes, it is .com...I don't think they have the .org domain, but they are a nonprofit in Botswana. A really fine, effective grass roots organization, and the best hope for protecting Botswana's cheetahs.

If you live on the west coast, Rebecca Klein of CCB will be at the Wildlife Conservation Expo in early October. (along with a stellar list of other conservationists, including Jane Goodall and Iain Douglas-Hamilton. Visit www.wildnet.org for details.

I remember there are population numbers for the most important species in the 'Okavango River: The Flow of a Lifeline' book. I will have a look at this when I'm home.

Mitch

CCB refers to a 1998 study that put the number at just under 2000 cheetahs in Botswana. but I recall that this "study" was pretty cursory--it was of all predators, and the projections were based on spoor in limited area surveys. CCB actually hopes that this study undercounted cheetahs given the areas sampled. We all hope so!

thats great to hear that botswana is number 1 or 2 in terms of population. certainly wouldnt have guessed that with namibia, tanzania, kenya etc. tashak, i am planning on visiting chitabe in no small part bc possible cheetah sightings.

I'm at home, and sorry, no cheetah numbers in the book. I also looked in some other books - nada.
(Hopefully they publish population numbers in the new and updated Smithers.)

Mitch

Certainly Mombo is not a good bet because of Lion / Leopard / Hyena densities. In the last couple of years we have seen more Cheetah at Mala Mala, which hasn't always been the case. I do remember the three from Savuti being absent our time there, then seeing them at Kwando.
Madikwe has a good Cheetah population but most sightings are of a four strong coalition of males, the females apparently are not very well relaxed yet. Another plus for Madikwe in about ten years time.

I've only seen one Cheetah, at MalaMala. I would love to see more because they are so beautiful.

In Namibia, I have been told they are such pests to farmers/ranchers that they are shot on sight. (Like they do with coyotes here in Texas.)

While I was writing this I had to google to see how true that was - and found this: Like many other threatened or endangered species around the world, the cheetah is being poached and hunted to critically low levels in its African habitat. In Namibia, for example, which has the largest cheetah population in the world, their numbers have dropped from 6,000 in 1980 to about 2,500 today. And when you realize that 95 per cent of the cheetah population now roams on farmland, it becomes clear that in the clash of cheetah vs. humans, the cheetahs are losing.

It goes on to say: The Cheetah Conservation Fund, however, is coming up with innovative ways of curbing the cheetah's dwindling numbers. With the help of Anatolian shepherd dogs, ranchers are finding it easier to tend to their herds of livestock on the plains of Africa when a protective large dog is there to ward off opportunistic cheetah attacks. It may sound a bit strange, but even the mighty cheetah is intimidated by these dogs - and to a large degree, that is keeping the cheetahs alive. In constrat to reaching for a gun, this new, non-aggressive - and non-fatal - approach seems to be finally winning out.

There's more at http://www.exn.ca/AnimalTracks/Cheetahs/Story1.cfm

BigCountry..I am dismayed to hear that one of the Savuti Cheetahs may die. We so enjoyed seeing them this past May.
Where did you read about this??

Tashah..Thanks so much for the link to the Cheetah Conservation website. I will be bookmarking it to read later.


Great thread..this site and it's members are a wealth of knowledge, both for travel information and animal conservation issues.
This is the type of information you will never find in a guidebook!

Brenda

Wallybrenda,
If you are really into cheetahs, you should arrange a few sidetrips on one of your future trips:
--outside Cape Town, on the grounds of the Spier Winery, Cheetah Outreach, has an education center and several cheetahs. For a contribution, you can enter into one of the enclosures and take photos without any fencing between.

--just outside Gaborone in Botswana, arrange a short stay at Mokolodi (you do need a vehicle to get around easily, but driving in this area is easy). CCB is located at Mokolodi, and they have a number of good activities at this educational reserve-- you can track white rhino on foot, a thrilling experience. AND you can visit the enclosure of two captive raised cheetahs for photographs. The are super models, and purred the whole time I was there. What a sound! (These cheetahs were "adopted" by a farmer who killed their mother...then felt bad about it. The two cubs were eventually confiscated by the Wildlife Authorities, and turned over to Mokolodi as didn't have the survival skills needed to be released to the wild. At Mokolodi they have a huge, natural enclosure, and they do seem to enjoy occasional visits. The money raised by the visits helps pay for all the wildlife rehab and care (for the cheetahs and other animals) at Mokolodi.

This is no subsitute for a bush experience, but it is excellent. I truly enjoyed it, and a friend travelling with me told me that the rhino tracking was the single biggest thrill of his holiday (and we visited Mombo, Kwetsani & DumaTau on this trip, with lots of exciting action...so that's a pretty high compliment).

BTW, any relatively large, trained dog will scare a cheetah off ranch animals--it doesn't have to be a specially bred Anatolian. CCB is helping farmers in Botswana use dogs, too. Basically cheetah are very unagressive cats. Donkeys, which are aggressive, will also scare off a cheetah.

bigcountry

reading the game reports from Kwando
I would estimate that they have 15-20 cheetahs seen more or less on a regular basis (this includes the 3 brothers that traverse Lebala, Selinda and the Linyanti).
During my last trip to Kwando (august 2004) I had 9 sightings in 9 days (total of 6 different cheetahs)

MV

We were told by our first Mombo guide, B.K. in 2001, that the cheetahs were suffering because of the high numbers of lions, hyena and even leopard in the area.

The cheetahs were by far the most succesful hunters with the vast majority of their hunts resulting in kills. The lions and hyenas had much lower success rates.

Unfortunataly though, the cheetahs were simply having too many of their kills stolen.

This is ontop of the fact that cheetahs are, I understand, genetically predisposed to a variety of health issues.

Researcher geneticists have worked out that, at some point in the past, the cheetah population was reduced right down to a single pregnant female. Because of that all cheetah today have an almost identical genetical blueprint - almost as if they were cloned - though of course, some mutations have crept back in since that time.

Which means that if a virus affects one, it will likely affect all in an area.

Also they are prone to teeth problems that can make it hard to feed.

I imagine it's a combination of all these factors and others too.

I would welcome information on whether I have understood the above correctly.

Kavey,

Your summary of the genetics is essentially correct. Some of the captive breeding programmes have been attempting to maximise genetic diversity by releasing cheetahs from different genetic backgrounds into various reserves.

My understanding is that the main reason cheetahs are rare in the Delta is that it's not the best habitat for them -- not open enough. Which also explains why they are more likely to be seen in the Linyanti area. In general, cheetahs don't seem to do so well where there are a lot of other predators, as they're on the bottom of the 'predator tree' and end up getting a lot of their kills stolen.

Another option for seeing cheetahs is the De Wildt rehab/breeding centre in Hartebeespoort (about 1.5 hours outside Joburg) -- they have ambassador cheetahs you can meet, and they also breed wild dogs. De Wildt is the source of the wild dogs at Madikwe, as well as some of the cheetahs, and they are also the source of the cheetahs at Spier. So if you have an overnight in Joburg, this might make a good option. The website is www.dewildt.org.za -- you have to book.

Cheers,
Julian

Kavey,

The reason why cheetahs are so successful hunters has something to do with this universal Law of Energy Conservation: if you spend a large amount of energy (the long and fast run) for getting prey (energy reward) you HAVE to be successful more often, otherwise you wouldn't survive.

Other predators don't spend so much energy in a hunt, and so more failures are acceptable.

The rule is: as longer the run as higher the success rate.

Leopards with a run of about 5-10m have the lowest success rate.

Mitch

We saw several cheetah in Etosha, and one of the reasons I'm going to Kgalagadi next year is because its supposedly quite good for cheetahs. We also saw large family of cheetah in Masai Mara and several individuals in Serengeti. But, from my experiences, Etosha was the best.

Michael

Michael,

as far as I know you're not allowed to leave the roads in Kgalagadi TP. Do you really expect good cheetah sightings anyway?

Mitch

I have no intention of leaving the roads since I'll be in a 2WD car -- I understand the roads are gravel so you can drive, but off road it becomes soft sand.

In Etosha, too, you are not permitted to drive off road, and we saw plenty of cats (lions and cheetahs).

Both parks have much less vegetation than Kruger, Chobe, Okavango, etc., and its a lot easier to see long distances.

So, I hope to see cheetah, but you never know.

More cheetah factoids:
Cheetah work so hard on that long exhausting run that they cannot even begin to eat some some time (perhaps 15 minutes?) after a hunt. Unfortunately this puts the cheetah at a disadvantage vs other predators who scavenge from them, since it is a real advantage to eat fast.

Cheetahs originally lived in the Americas! And from there dispersed via land bridges to Asia and finally Africa. But after that catastrophic population collapse, no population ever reached the Americas.

I have heard that wild dog are the most successful hunters of any carnivore, and they only have a 70% success rate (but they fit the theory of the long run...they are amazing runners, AND they have extraordinary strategy as a pack on their side. So I think that guide was exaggerating a bit about cheetahs in general. I don't think their hunts are that successful, they would be very lucky to have 50:50 odds (the average for cheetahs as a whole species). Of course, the guide might have been speaking of a particular group of cheetahs, because it is certainly the case that some animals are much better at hunting than others. Sure hope these cheetahs successfully pass on their genes!!

I had always heard about the genetic equivalent of passing through "the eye of a needle" but had never heard the theory that it got down to one pregnant female. Fascinating possibility...amazing what genetic studies can find.

Any info on DeWildt? For my trip next year, at least in its current version, I have a day layover in Johannesburg on my way from Vic Falls to Upington, and I'd like to visit DeWildt, maybe combining it with trip to Stefonktein (I'm sure I butchered the spelling, but I'm referring to the caves in which they discovered fossils).

Thit cho, I think you were quite lucky to see so many cheetah at Etosha! I didn't see any in my stay there... Prior to that stay, I'd been a volunteer at CCF, and when one of the staff saw a cheetah there on her trip, they were all very excited. CCF does regular trips there with their volunteers, they know the cheetah are there, but they have rarely seen them on Etosha game drives. Although this was in 2002-- and I have heard that the weather conditions the last few years have been very favorable to cheetah, possibly leading to a really good increase in the Namibian population. Good news, if true!
Thit_cho, when were you in Etosha?