Did you know that without the help of people who love animals, cheetahs might disappear from the wild by 2015?

In 2001, I traveled to Kenya in East Africa with world-renowned wildlife photographers, John and Barbara Gerlach. We spent three weeks photographing and filming incredible animals in Samburu National Reserve, Lewa Downs, Lake Nakuru National Park and Masai Mara National Reserve.

I saw and filmed over fifty species of amazing animals, from elephants to bee-eaters, black rhinos to leopards, and then finally the animal that I fell in love with, the cheetah!

The first cheetah that I saw in the Mara was a lone male, who let us drive along side of him as he was stalking a herd of wildebeest. Suddenly he burst forward through the tall grass and disappeared from our cameras. When we finally caught up with him, he had a young wildebeest on the ground.

A couple days later, we found a female cheetah and her two cubs. The little ones where so cute that this sealed the deal. The cheetah was now my favorite African animal.

In 2004, I attended a talk by Dr. Laurie Marker, the Executive Director and Founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund (cheetah.org) while she was visiting Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon. She mentioned that there were only 36 cheetahs remaining in Masai Mara and I was shocked. In fact, there may be fewer than 10 thousand wild cheetahs left in the entire world.

Nobody in Africa told us that this beautiful and majestic cat was so endangered. How can it be that the world's fastest land mammal is on the fast track to extinction and few people are aware of this fact?

This so concerned me that I produced, and recently released a DVD for kids and their families called "Kidsloveanimals.com's African Safari" to educate people about the endangered status of the wild cheetah and rhinos. Furthermore, I am donating 2% from every DVD that I sell to the Cheetah Conservation Fund (cheetah.org) and to the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy (lewa.org) to save endangered cheetahs and rhinos. Please visit kidsloveanimals.com for more information.

In my next blog I will tell you about the amazing work that is being done by the Cheetah Conservation Fund and our last meeting with Dr. Laurie Marker on October 15, 2005.