Study: Cheetahs fast disappearing
IT’S GETTING harder and harder to spot a cheetah these days.
The world’s fastest land animal could be hurtling toward extinction, claimed a recent study calling for the carnivorous cats to be upgraded in conservation status from “vulnerable” to “endangered.”
Just 7,100 cheetahs remain worldwide — occupying just 9% of their historic geographic range, mainly in East and southern Africa, according to the report published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Asiatic cheetah subspecies, for example, numbers only 50 in one part of Iran.
“Given the secretive nature of this elusive cat, it has been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked,” said study author Sarah Durant, who helmed the joint effort from the Zoological Society of London, the Wildlife Conservation Society and Panthera.
“Our findings show that the large space requirements for cheetah, coupled with the complex range of threats faced by the species in the wild, mean that it is likely to be much more vulnerable to extinction than was previously thought.”
Parks and reserves haven’t protected the fast-living felines from the all-too-common perils of habitat loss, prey loss and illegal trade and trafficking, the study authors explained — not to mention 77% of their habitat doesn’t even fall within those protected enclaves.
A major difficulty is the spotted stalkers’ “wide-ranging movements,” the researchers said, citing Zimbabwe as an example: Over a mere 16 years, the country’s cheetah count has dropped from 1,200 to 170.
It remained unclear whether the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which evaluates and assigns conservation status, would reclassify cheetahs. But the upshot from this latest research, according to Panthera cheetah program director Kim Overton, is that “securing protected areas” won’t be sufficient to save the purring prowlers, who don’t roar, like other big cats. “We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-reaching cats inhabit,” said Overton, “if we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever.”