In South Africa, as much of the cheetah population as much of the cheetah population live either outside protected land or in reserves that are small, with space for only a few individuals. Cheetah, being small, cannot defend their kills from Leopards Lions and Hyena, as well as loosing many of their young to these bigger predators.
Currently the cheetah population is over 400 within the Kruger. This number does oscillate, when i was working on the edge of the Kruger, back in 2007 the cheetah population was around 100.
Spots of hope was a project that worked with private reserves, with small populations of cheetah. By regularly capturing individuals and moving them to different reserves, the cheetahs across all these reserves can be though of as a mega population.
At the start of the project there were 217 cheetahs spread across the 41 reserves that were involved. With the moving that went on, that cheetah population has grown to 419 spread across 60 reserves – which now consists of more than 1/3 of the countries total.
Over the last 45 years or so, the cheetah population of South Africa has roughly doubled, yet the same cannot be said for other southern African countries.
Zimbabwe had 1500 in 1975 but has 170 today
Botswana has held roughly steady at 1500
Namibia had 3000 back in 1975 but now just 1400 remain.
In contrast South Africa had roughly 500 in 1975 but now has about 1300.
It would appear that as our conservation landscape gets more broken up, some species will need much work from us if they are to survive and thrive.
