Cheetahs to grace Moz’s rich plains again
CHEETAHS will soon grace the wildlife-rich plains of Maputo Special Reserve in southern Mozambique for the first time since the 1960s, as four big cats, sourced from private game reserves in South Africa, have been transported safely to holding bomas within the reserve.
They will undergo an acclimatisation period, before being released into the 104 200ha reserve, completing this reintroduction of the world’s fastest land mammal.
The reserve is managed through a partnership agreement signed between Mozambique’s National Administration for Conservation Areas (Anac) and Peace Parks Foundation in 2018.
With support from Ashia Cheetah Conservation, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and veterinary partner the Mozambique Wildlife Alliance, drawing on decades of combined experience, the first four cheetahs will now be reintroduced.
Anac director-general Mateus Mutemba said: “We have been committed to expanding and safeguarding the precious ecological assets of Maputo Special Reserve, a region that protects the best of Mozambique’s natural heritage.
’’Through our partnership with Peace Parks, the reintroduction of cheetah is yet another historic conservation milestone in Mozambique and in the ongoing development of the reserve into a self-sustaining operation that generates revenue for the
communities living in the area.”
Two male cheetahs were flown in from the and Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, while an adult female and her sub-adult female cub were flown from the Waterval Private Game Reserve, near Kimberley in the Northern Cape.
The cheetahs were donated by Ashia, which also covered the costs of the translocation, including transportation,
vaccination and the fitting of tracking collars to monitor the big cats in their new environment.
The reintroduction of the cats into Maputo Special Reserve is part of an ambitious goal to establish a healthy metapopulation (a group of spatially separated populations of the same species which interact at some level) that contributes to the conservation of the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), a species
which has been eliminated from 90% of its range in Africa, with an estimated population of only 6 600 individuals remaining.
“Reintroduction of cheetahs into protected areas is one of the key strategies to reduce the risk of extinction, fuelled by habitat loss and events such as persecution, prey depletion and disease,” explained Marna Smit, director for Ashia Cheetah Conservation.
With plenty of prey and appropriate habitat in the Maputo Special Reserve, the introduction of cheetah, which were extirpated from the region decades ago, was found to be suitable following a feasibility study from the EWT, which also managed the selection and relocation of the animals to Mozambique.
This operation falls under the EWT’s Cheetah Range Expansion Project.
“This represents our 26th cheetah reintroduction over the past decade. Thanks to the efforts of Anac and Peace Parks, there are now greater levels of ecological functionality in the protected areas of Mozambique. This has created safe spaces for the reintroduction of wild cheetahs within their historical range,” said Cheetah Range Expansion Project co-ordinator Vincent van der Merwe, at the EWT’s Carnivore Conservation Programme.
After three weeks in the bomas, the cheetahs will be released into the reserve, after which time they will be carefully monitored on a daily basis by the reserve management, in partnership with the University of Eduardo Mondlane and the EWT.
The rewilding programme is a vital component of the restoration and development of the reserve and, largely through funding support from the World Bank Mozbio Programme, almost 5 000 animals, including, buffalo, giraffe, impala, kudu, nyala, waterbuck, warthog, oribi, eland, blue wildebeest and zebra have been translocated there over the past decade.