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Tracking cheetahs using pictures

Thursday August 28 2014
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A cheetah named Malaika and her cubs at the Maasai Mara. PHOTO | ELENA CHELYSHEVA

The Tuareg of North Africa call the cheetah “those who move slowly.” This is because of the rocky, mountainous terrain where cheetahs hunt mountain goats in this part of the continent.

The big cat of the African savannah is, however world famous for being the fastest animal on land, reaching speeds of 112 kilometres per hour.

According to Dr Elena Chelysheva, a Russian zool­o­gist who has been studying the big cats for three decades, both notions are correct. She has pictures of wild cheetah on the jagged mountain cliffs of the Atlas mountains, on snow in Iran and the rugged terrain of Afghanistan.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the global population of cheetahs was estimated at 100,000 and by the end of the century, it had dropped to 15,000.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the figure was alarmingly low – 7,500 only in the wild — a 50 per cent reduction. The reasons cited are habitat loss and reduction in prey base, human-wildlife conflict, illegal trade and poaching, diseases and also direct and indirect disturbance.

In Kenya, these big cats can be found in 23 per cent of their historical range.

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Dr Chelysheva has been studying cheetahs for a quarter of a century and has worked in zoos and conservation centres in Russia, United Arab Emirates, and the US. In 1999, she moved to Namibia to volunteer for Laurie Marker of the Cheetah Conservation Fund who pioneered cheetah research in the wild in Africa.

At the turn of the millennium, Dr Chelysheva made contact with the Kenya Wildlife Service while on a safari to Kenya with a group of Russian travel agents, and the tour included the Maasai Mara National Reserve.

KWS happened then to be looking for a cheetah specialist. “And here I was,” she exclaims. “KWS invited me to work as an assistant researcher at the government-sponsored Cheetah Conservation Project in the Maasai Mara.”

The project was to ascertain cheetah numbers and threats in the Mara and the adjoining group ranches, which have morphed into modern-day community conservancies.

Counting cheetahs isn’t easy work. In 2001, Dr Chelysheva developed an identification method based on the unique spot patterns on the limbs of the cats and the rings and spots on the tail using photographs taken by the research team, tourists, driver-guides, lodge managers, and other scientists. This method of comparing spot patterns was published in a scientific journal in 2004 and is being used by other researchers.

“We use spots on limbs because in cheetah cubs clear spots will be seen first on the limbs, then on the tail and at last on the body. Unlike hyena spots, they do not fade with time but become brighter. The advantage of my methodology is that it makes it possible to identify correctly individuals from the age of one month,” she explains.

“Based on this method, we can work out the lifespan of the cheetah, the survival rate of the cubs, kinship between individuals such as who the mother was and monitor the status (disease and recovery from injuries) of individuals. It gives us the opportunity to chart the personal life and reproductive history of an individual.”

With 20,000 pictures taken between 2001 and the present 110 adults have been identified. From 2012 to date, 64 individuals in the Mara have been identified and the kinship between 47 adults revealed.

In 2013 and beginning of 2014, 35 cubs born in 10 litters were photographed, out of which 89 per cent died of different causes within their first three months. In comparison, cub mortality rate in neighbouring Serengeti is lower – 64 per cent. The research team is investigating the reasons for this difference.

In 2011, KWS commissioned Dr Chelysheva to follow up on her earlier research, which lead to the formation of the Mara-Meru Cheetah Project to include the Meru Conservation Area, in Kenya’s remote northeastern frontier.

The research aims to reveal population status and identify behavioural adaptations of the cheetah in two areas, which experience different types of human influence.

In Maasai Mara National Reserve, there is a lot of tourism, but relatively low grazing by livestock in comparison with Meru where there is high pastoral activity compared with tourism.

The research team is set out to investigate the level of influence of other predators and human activity on cheetah behaviour and physiology, in particular reproduction, and survival — in the presence and absence of tourists.

The first research was between 2001 and 2002, followed by the one at present, which began in 2012. Dr Chelysheva’s previous study shows that 75 per cent of cheetah behaviour is changing due to “the sounds of tourist presence.“

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