ID 88
Title Sun, Spoor and Spots: counting Namibia's Cheetahs
Broadcast 2007-03-20 00:00:00
Network Radio 4
Presenter Frauke Jensen
Producer Mike Hally
Precis Namibia has the largest population of cheetahs in the world yet no-one really knows how many – “2,500” is a widely quoted figure but it’s twenty years old and was largely guesswork even then. Counting the shy and elusive cheetah is difficult but Okatumba Wildlife Research, a project set up by two German scientists, is developing new methods, assisted by groups of volunteers from Biosphere Expeditions who pay to spend a fortnight in the Bush collecting the raw data.
Duration 28
Txtime 1899-12-30 11:02:00
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Description Knowledge of the population size of an endangered species is fundamental to effective conservation yet often difficult. Cheetahs move around individually or in small groups, mostly at night, avoiding contact with humans. Radio-collaring and tracking is too expensive and labour-intensive to monitor large numbers so the scientists are developing indirect techniques of assessing the population, for example by counting the “spoor density” – the number of “spoors”, meaning paw-prints, on a particular farm road can be directly related to the number of cheetah in the area.

Surprisingly over 90% of Namibian cheetahs live on commercial farms, which make up only 40% of the country. Conversely just 5 % live in the reserves that cover 20% of the land. So this project is studying farmland cheetahs, who prosper there because farmers have eliminated their main rivals, lion and wild dogs, because there’s lots of prey, mainly small antelope, and there’s plenty of water. And they do well in spite of the fact that they are frequently blamed for the loss of goats and young cattle and hundreds are shot by farmers every year.

Another unusual aspect of this project is that for 10 weeks each year they have groups of paying volunteers from other parts of the world, who each give up a fortnight to work as research assistants and gather the data. There’s some scepticism about this use of non-scientists but experience shows they’re at least as effective as post-graduate science students; a finding confirmed by a recent academic study of their performance.

Results so far suggest the cheetah population is significantly higher than the 2,500 estimate – and rising. One of the implications is that trophy hunting might be encouraged on a larger scale, on the basis that farmers will conserve cheetahs if each one is worth thousands of dollars – instead of treating them as vermin. But that suggestion too is controversial.

The programme was recorded on location in Namibia, much of it accompanying the volunteers. It is presented by the BBC’s Namibia reporter Frauke Jensen, who grew up on a farm there and has known of the cheetah’s precarious existence since childhood.

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Pic1
Caption1 A rare sight! Many volunteers never actually see a cheetah, but this group found one in their trap, darted it, fitted a radio-collar, waited for it to recover, then opened the trap-door ... [copyright Cathy Howieson]
Pic2
Caption2 An empty box-trap, next to a cheetah 'play-tree', primed and ready to trap the next cheetah that tries to reach its tree -- note the thorn bushes placed round the tree so that the only way in is through the box-trap. [copyright Mike Hally]
Pic3
Caption3 The enthusiastic but untrained volunteers first need to learn some basic research skills, although this is one thing they DON'T do for real -- anaesthetising a cheetah using a dart and blowpipe. Practice -- on a stuffed 'cheetah' -- makes perfect. The real cheetah would be this close, but safely in a trap, and only the project scientists are licensed to do it. [copyright Mike Hally]
Pic4
Caption4 One of the data-collecting teams in action -- a volunteer holds the radio aerial aloft, to get a reading from a cheetah with a radio collar on it. Both direction and distance can be deduced from the strength of the signal, while triangulation -- two more readings from different places -- will give a much more accurate location. [copyright Mike Hally]
Pic5
Caption5 Another volunteer team counting animal tracks or 'spoor' along a defined farm-track, with one volunteer on one wing and an expert local tracker on the other. Raw data from this count, repeated many times, allows the scientists to produce an index that relates spoor density to cheetah population. [copyright Mike Hally]