The Cheetah Conservations Fund

Dr. Laurie Marker is the Executive Director of The Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), which is located in Namibia, Africa. She and her organization have made incredible strides in Africa doing research and teaching farmers how to live in harmony with cheetahs.

Cheetahs are not man-eaters, nor will they risk their lives to go after livestock when dogs or donkeys protect them. That's why CCF is giving Anatolian Shepherd dogs to farmers. Farmers who use these dogs learn that they no longer have to kill cheetahs to protect their cows and goats. Learn more at cheetah.org.

Abused Cheetah Cubs Rescued In Ethiopia

The Associated Press published a report last week about two abused cheetah cubs that were being held captive in a restaurant in an Ethiopian village. According to the article "the 3-month-old cubs were being forced to fight each other for the amusement of the patrons at a Gode restaurant: one cheetah was blind, possibly from the poachers who kicked the animal in the face."

To read the whole article go to:

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051125/ap_on_re_af/ethiopia_cheetahs

This is very sad for us, and it is one of the reasons why we are supporting the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an organization that is making big strides toward protecting these wonderful animals.

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.