Flying Cheetahs

Over the last hundred years, the wild cheetah population has declined by around 97% with less than 7,000 cheetahs now estimated to be left in the wild. It’s not all bad news though. Thanks to well-co-ordinated management and protection, the cheetah population spread across South Africa’s private reserves is now growing at a rate of 8% a year, enough to spare around 30 cheetahs a year for reintroduction efforts elsewhere.

Wildlife in Mozambique’s Zambezi Delta was decimated by both sides in the Mozambican civil war but has now started to recover. The 90,000-hectare unfenced area where the cheetahs are to be released offers a rare opportunity for cheetah conservation – a space large enough to support over 100 cheetahs allowing them to behave entirely naturally, unlike the numerous smaller private reserves in South Africa where they must be managed with frequent translocations to prevent inbreeding.