Cheetah Family & Me
Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan gets up close and personal to a wild cheetah family…
5-6 January, 9pm BBC2 Factual
Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan tracks a cheetah mum and her cubs through the Kalahari Desert in his latest two-part documentary, all in order to highlight the plight of these beautiful big cats, which are sadly threatened with extinction.
Cheetahs are famously the world’s fastest land mammal. But they are also dangerously close to extinction, with just 7,000 left in the wild, as Gordon Buchanan reveals in his new two-part documentary.
To find out why, the wildlife cameraman is in the Kalahari Desert, South Africa, following a wild cheetah known as Savannah, and her four cubs, as they sleep, hunt and fight for survival.
‘Cheetahs are charismatic, beautiful cats, but thanks to climate change and habitat loss, their numbers have plummeted,’ he says.
‘They can have five or six cubs, and on average only two of them will make it to adulthood.’
Gordon has to gain Savannah’s trust, so she’s comfortable with him being nearby.
Observation
He spends nights camped out in the wild and the days tracking Savannah on foot as she battles against a shortage of prey, an ambush by a wildcat and the loss of one of her cubs to a leopard.
‘Savannah quickly realised I wasn’t a threat,’ says Gordon. ‘One of the cubs came so close to me that I couldn’t film him with my huge camera lens, so I ended up shooting on my mobile phone!’
Gordon hopes seeing life from a cheetah family’s perspective will help us understand what we can do to save them.
‘People care more about wild animals now than they ever have,’ says Gordon. ‘With the right polices and protection in place, cheetahs will survive.’