A Michael Broad Blog
For a long time now there has been a fascination with the exotic cheetah, the world’s fastest land animal, which has encouraged the illegal trade of cheetahs as they are taken from their mothers, caged, smuggled and sold as pets in countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, where the rich feel the need …
Here is an Infographic telling us about the shocking decline in population numbers of four iconic wild cat species. These are for big cats. I have left out the jaguar which is a classic big cat for no particular reason. It’s important to remember that, as stated in the Infographic, the best experts in …
Anyone who writes about cats has an obligation to remind readers that the world population of the cheetah has declined catastrophically since the 1900s when there were an estimated 100,000 on the planet while today there are an estimated 6500. The population is severely fragmented and it is decreasing year-on-year. Nothing has changed. A …
NEWS AND COMMENT: You may have heard about Project Cheetah. It is the relocation of, initially, 20 cheetahs from Namibia, Africa to the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, India. The cheetah was extirpated in that country by 1953 due to man’s mismanagement and cruel exploitation. The grand relocation plan envisaged there would be …
NEWS AND VIEWS – KUNO NATIONAL PARK, MADHYA PRADESH, INDIA: There is speculation that the GPS tracking collars placed around the necks of the relocated cheetahs from South Africa to India are killing some of them because the cheetahs are irritated by the collars in damp conditions and are scratching their necks causing a …
NEWS AND COMMENT-SOMALILAND: Calum Cairns, a former veterinarian working in rural North Yorkshire, UK, is today a cheetah rescuer operating out of a facility on the edge of Hargeisa, in the capital of Somaliland in East Africa. The cheetahs that he rescues are often in a bad way being malnourished and dehydrated. The Cheetah …
There are at least 2 reasons why cheetahs reproduced poorly, which is an added reason why they are vulnerable to extinction in the wild. There has been an approximate 50% decline in population numbers over the past four decades. Inbreeding The first reason is inbreeding due to mating between close relatives. There have been …
This is a plea to the rich residents of the Middle East who want to keep a cheetah as a pet; please stop it. Please stop it now. What you’re doing is cruel. You are damaging the conservation of the cheetah severely. You are presenting to the world that this beautiful creature, the world’s …
