Two cheetah capture & release - June 2010

N/a’an ku sê’s Director and renowned conservationist, Marlice van Vuuren, and N/a’an ku sê’s research biologist, Florian Weise recently collected two male cheetah from a farm in the East of Namibia. They were released just a few weeks later into the safety the beautiful Kulala Nature Reserve in the South of Namibia. Our resident film maker, Gus was lucky enough to go on both trips and tells us about the release…

Marlice and Flo were accompanied by the French film crew One Planet to a farm near Witvlei, in the east of Namibia, to pick up two cheetah that were depleting breeding game stock. They collected two males, who were about three years old, in one of our newly sponsored Land Rovers.

Following a short stay at N/a’an ku sê, the cheetah were safely darted and transferred to a capture cage on Saturday June 26th. The darting and transfer to the cages took approximately fifty minutes in total. It was amazing to see the whole darting process…the team was like a well oiled machine, they knew exactly what to do and how to do. There was never a moment of hesitation; they needed to work quickly to take all the measurements and samples while the males were still under. 

Early the next morning, the cheetah were transferred, on the back of the Land Rover, to Kulala Desert Lodge, which is about 400km from N/a’an ku sê. It was a long drive but Kulala is one of the more beautiful places I have ever been to in my life. Surrounded by bright red sand dunes, if I were a cheetah…that is where I would want to live. Once we arrived at Kulala the cheetahs were feed two chickens and we left them in their transport cage for the evening. 

 

The next day, it was time for the big release. It was actually rather comical because the two cats did not want to leave the capture cage once the gate was open. This can often happen with cheetah and it’s not unusual for them to have to be left to leave the cage overnight. 

Our pair sat in the cage for about an hour and a half before Rudie and Marlice slide the cage out from under them. But still they did not want to leave and it then took another half an hour before the two cheetah ran to freedom. It was quite funny because there was a group of people watching the release and the cats, which were out of the cage, just did not want to go! It was absolutely amazing to be that close to wild cheetah without any fence between them and I. They are beautiful animals. 

When they had been darted, we had fitted them each with a VHF radio collar for tracking and monitoring purposes. We were able to get a signal later that evening following their release. The next morning we signaled for them again but we were not able to gather any signal from them. The receiver we had maxed out at about 3km and from what we gather, they had run off together in the direction of a mountain, which was a lot more than 3km away. 

The whole process went very smoothly with no problems and now the cats have a lovely new home where they can run free.