Calling for his mother, this young Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is vulnerable in many ways. Not only is he at immediate risk from the nearby surrounding predators, he also faces an uncertain future for the survival of his species. Masai Mara, Kenya.
A group of passionate scientists have come together to demand that the International Union for Conservation of Nature list the cheetah as endangered. Researchers with the National Geographic Society’s Big Cats Initiative released a new study in the journal PeerJ on December 11 with updated numbers of the cheetah population in southern Africa—the biggest of […]
The Saharan cheetah is one of the world’s rarest big cats. At face value, that isn’t all that surprising. Deserts are harsh environments that support few large herbivores, which means there are even fewer carnivores around. But if we’ve learned anything about ecology, it’s that healthy ecosystems require the survival of apex predators; they keep […]
Who will win in this race for survival? With fewer than 12,500 individuals left in the wild, the Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is in a race for it’s very existence and perhaps in the long run on the losing end of this battle. With extremely high cub mortality rates, loss of habitat and poor defences in […]
Bigger than all of Brazil, among the harshest ecosystems on Earth, and largely undeveloped, one would expect that the Sahara desert would be a haven for desert wildlife. One would anticipate that big African animals—which are facing poaching and habitat loss in other parts of the world—would thrive in this vast wilderness. But a new […]
Asiatic cheetahs, a subspecies of the fastest animal on earth, are extinct everywhere except in Iran, where they are considered to be critically endangered. But marking a rare success, conservationists at the Persian wildlife heritage foundation (PWHF) have spotted a group of five Asiatic cheetahs (also known as Iranian cheetahs) – a mother with four […]
