Dogs Are Key to Saving the Cheetah from Extinction

May 20

May 20 Dogs Are Key to Saving the Cheetah from Extinction

Cheetahs, the fastest land animal on the planet, are up against multiple existential threats: dwindling habitat, poachers, lethal competition with farmers. This week the Cheetah Conservation Fund founder and executive director, Laurie Marker, sat down with PBS to talk about the big cat's fight for survival.

Over the past century, the cheetah population has declined by 90 percent, with only about 7,000 clinging to existence across 20 countries, most of them in southern Africa. Marker set up the Conservation Fund in Namibia in 1990, shortly after the country had gained its independence. She found that farmers were killing hundreds of cheetahs every year.

Rather than demonize the ranchers, Marker decided to listen to them, “going door to door, talking with the farmers, addressing their questions,” she says. “I learned from them what they needed to know in order to live with cheetahs. And they taught me a lot about what they didn't know so I could make a plan.”

The plan included training programs for the local populations and developing nonlethal ways for farmers to live alongside a wide-ranging predator (cheetahs typically roam over hundreds of miles to hunt). One simple but effective solution has been to protect livestock with specially trained guard dogs.

The dogs – Anatolian shepherds and Kangal dogs raised and bred at CCF Namibia headquarters – have one basic function: to bark loudly whenever they see a cheetah or other predator. And it works! Since 1994, CCF has placed hundreds of dogs with farmers who report dramatic reductions of livestock loss. Now there is a long waiting list for dogs.

Says Marker, “If we could help them learn how to better live with a predator by protecting their livestock, having more wildlife, have good grazing, then they can all live in harmony together and the cheetah can live.”

It costs about $1000 per year to feed, train, and provide healthcare for one livestock guarding dog in Namibia. Chip in to support the effort here.