By Zoe Biggs | Program Manager
Dear Supporters,
Our newest carnivore, the female cheetah, has been splendid at being a cheetah. We just created new
spatial maps showing the differences between lion and cheetah core ranges. All which would not be
possible without the use of our telemetry equipment.
Karongwe’s newbie!
A few months ago, Karongwe translocated in a new female cheetah from a neighbouring reserve, bringing us to 4 cheetahs in total. To acclimate her to the new surroundings, we placed her in a boma for about 6 weeks where she could learn the smells and sounds of her new home. She is an extremely important little lady for the whole of the South African cheetah metapopulation, and we are all rooting for her success! With the not-so-long ago bottleneck of the cheetah species, translocations throughout multiple fenced reserves is necessary to diversify the gene pool. We are thrilled to update you that our new girl has been doing tremendously well. She hunts for herself, she protects herself, and she’s making Karongwe her home. Because of your generous help, we can track her daily and take information on her location, how often she feeds and how she manages to stay away from other predators. Learning her movement patterns are essential and it wouldn’t be possible without the telemetry equipment we purchase through this fund.
Cheetah vs Lion
Along with tracking our female cheetah, we also use telemetry to locate our male cheetah coalition and our lion pride each day. Recently, our science officer has begun to look at spatial maps to see how the cheetahs manage to avoid run-ins with the lions. Our new spatial maps show us how different the core ranges for each species differ. The male cheetah coalition spends most of their time along the fence line and in a more open area of the reserve, whereas the lions spend most of their time near a large dam and close to the river areas. Tracking these animals every morning and afternoon for years to follow can lead us to so much more awesome information like this!
All because of your support of this fund, we are able to learn more about our cheetahs and lions each and every day. We cannot thank you enough.
Love,
The Karongwe team
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