NEWS AND COMMENT: This is a common sense and effective approach to substantially reducing the problem of cheetahs killing livestock in Namibia. It’s the first time I’ve seen this approach taken. Conflict between predators like the cheetah and farmers is a constant problem in Africa and it leads to the death of the predator because the farmers retaliate to protect their livestock so they poison or kill the cheetah in anyway they can. It’s about protecting their livelihood, so we can understand the attitude.
A study published on December 7, 2020 called Communication hubs of an asocial cat are the source of a human-carnival conflict and a carnivore conflict and key to its solution has reported that if farmers know where cheetahs congregate in what the researchers describe as “hubs” they can avoid them and farm their livestock elsewhere. When this happens the cheetahs prey on animals other than livestock and they found that livestock losses were reduced by 86%. It is a brilliant result.
