The year 2016 has bid adieu with one more bad news for nature lovers. The world’s fastest land animal, the cheetah, is sprinting towards the edge of extinction and could soon be lost forever unless urgent, landscape-wide conservation action is taken, according to a study published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Gulf Times had mentioned in these columns last month about the iconic giraffe being listed as an endangered species and that reindeer are shrinking on an Arctic island near the North Pole in a side-effect of climate change. Now, it is the turn of the cheetah.
Led by Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Panthera and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the study reveals that just 7,100 cheetahs remain globally, representing the best available estimate for the species to date. The information becomes all the more alarming when read together with the fact that the cheetah has been driven out of 91% of its historic range. Asiatic cheetah populations have been hit hardest, with fewer than 50 individuals remaining in one isolated pocket of Iran.
Due to the species’ dramatic decline, the study’s authors are calling for the cheetah to be up-listed from ‘Vulnerable’ to ‘Endangered’ on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. Typically, greater international conservation support, prioritisation and attention are granted to wildlife classified as ‘Endangered’, in efforts to stave off impending extinction.
While renowned for its speed and spots, cheetahs face a high degree of persecution both inside and outside of protected areas that is largely unrecognised. Even within guarded parks and reserves, cheetahs rarely escape the pervasive threats of human-wildlife conflict, prey loss due to overhunting by people, habitat loss and the illegal trafficking of cheetah parts and trade as exotic pets.
To make matters worse, as one of the world’s most wide-ranging carnivores, 77% of the cheetah’s habitat falls outside of protected areas. Unrestricted by boundaries, the species’ wide-ranging movements weaken law enforcement protection and greatly amplify its vulnerability to human pressures. Indeed, largely due to pressures on wildlife and their habitat outside of protected areas, Zimbabwe’s cheetah population has plummeted from 1,200 to a maximum of 170 animals in just 16 years - representing an astonishing loss of 85% of the country’s cheetahs.
Scientists are now calling for an urgent paradigm shift in cheetah conservation, towards landscape-level efforts that transcend national borders and are co-ordinated by existing regional conservation strategies for the species. A holistic conservation approach, which incentivises protection of cheetahs by local communities and trans-national governments, alongside sustainable human-wildlife coexistence is paramount to the survival of the species.
According to Panthera’s Cheetah Programme director, Dr Kim Young-Overton, the take-away from this pinnacle study is that securing protected areas alone is not enough. “We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-ranging cats inhabit, if we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever.”
