Qualla: Cheetah Conservation Fund

Cheetah Conservation Fund: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Bjsullivandc assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. Laurie Marker arrived in Namibia with an unwelcome message and a guard dog. As a young biologist she had raised cheetahs in the United States and learned a brutal arithmetic: most of the world's remaining wild cheetahs lived on private farmland, and the farmers were shooting them to protect their livestock. So in 1990 she moved to a farmhouse east of Otjiwarongo and started not with the cats but with the people - because the cheetah's survival, she understood, would be decided by ranchers, not by scientists. That single insight grew into the Cheetah Conservation Fund, today the world's leading authority on the species.

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Bjsullivandc assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5

Cheetah Conservation Fund: The Country That Holds the Cheetah

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eberack, CC BY-SA 4.0. Namibia matters to cheetahs more than any other place on Earth. The country shelters the largest and healthiest wild population of the species - an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 animals, the biggest single population left anywhere. Crucially, most of them do not live in fenced parks b...

Image: Eberack | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cheetah Conservation Fund: A Dog Instead of a Gun

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit GIRAUD Patrick, CC BY 2.5. The CCF's most quietly revolutionary idea wears fur and barks. Its Livestock Guarding Dog Program places Anatolian shepherds and Kangals - big, ancient breeds bred for millennia to guard flocks - with farmers across the country. A dog raised among goats from puppyhood treats the ...

Image: GIRAUD Patrick | CC BY 2.5

Cheetah Conservation Fund: Fixing the Land Itself

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Brunauer on behalf of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), CC BY-SA 4.0. A cheetah needs room to run, and across Namibia that room is vanishing into bush. Decades of overgrazing have let woody thornbush choke the open savanna in a process called bush encroachment, robbing the cheetah of the sightlines and sprinting space it depends on. The CCF turned ...

Image: Tim Brunauer on behalf of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cheetah Conservation Fund: The Genetics of Survival

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arturo de Frias Marques, CC BY-SA 4.0. The cheetah carries an ancient wound in its blood. The species passed through a severe population bottleneck thousands of years ago and emerged with remarkably little genetic diversity - leaving cheetahs unusually vulnerable to disease and inbreeding, especially in captivity. The...

Image: Arturo de Frias Marques | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cheetah Conservation Fund: A Model That Travels

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexander Klink, CC BY 4.0. Laurie Marker's work earned international recognition, including the 2010 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, one of the highest honors in the field. But the deeper measure of the CCF is how far its ideas have spread. Its blend of field research, farmer partnership, and pr...

Image: Alexander Klink | CC BY 4.0