​There has been a bevy of activity recently with our Learn to Play Community Playgroup in Kacgae. In early January, the “mamas” who run the programme travelled to Botswana’s capital city of Gaborone to receive refresher training focused on holistic mindful play. The mamas are due to receive more training soon – a 5-day course in food preparation, so they are equipped with the skills necessary to safely and effectively prepare food for the children at the playgroup each day. This is an exciting development, as it will help provide nutritious food for the kids, which in turn helps their bodies and minds to grow. It will also improve attendance at the playgroup and provides an extra source of income and training for the mamas themselves. 
 
Last month, the children received a donation of knitted ponchos and beanies from the Learn to Play team in Gaborone, which will help keep the children warm during the frigid winter months. They also received a donation of tables and chairs so that they no longer had to sit on the cold concrete floor during their playgroup sessions. Despite being located in the heart of the Kalahari Desert, the temperatures often drop below freezing in the town of Kacgae. The chairs and these winter woolies will help keep their small bodies warm and allow them to come to the playgroup even on those particularly cold and windy days. 
 
After a long and arduous process, we have recently received the compliance certification which licenses our playgroup as an official early-childhood learning facility. This is the first community playgroup under Learn to Play’s nationwide playgroup roll-out that has received such accreditation and we are incredibly proud that the council has honoured us so. All in all, the playgroup continues to be an exciting addition to our activities within the Kacgae community – providing jobs for mothers and learning opportunities for youngsters that they did not have before. We are so thankful to our partners at Learn to Play for working with us to make this playgroup a reality. The smiles on the children’s faces make it all worthwhile. Wouldn’t you agree? 

We often refer to the paradoxical anomaly that our field staff rarely see cheetahs. Despite cheetahs being a threatened species with only an estimated 7,000 left on the planet, our field site in the Ghanzi District is home to one of the densest populations in the world. You would, therefore, expect to see them regularly. However, when not actively tracking them or catching them for research, our staff probably see cheetahs on average twice a year. It’s definitely an occasion to celebrate when we do! In fact, our team were over the moon last month when they found cheetah tracks 400m from the front gate of our farm – and that was just a footprint! 
 
Cheetahs survive in this farming area so effectively for a reason. Whether it’s the thick bush hiding them from prying eyes, their secretive nature adapted after years of persecution or a combination of both – these cats survive because they avoid humans. And we are both proud of this and lament it at the same time (because who doesn’t want to see cheetahs all the time?). 
 
As a result, when it comes to catching cheetahs to place research collars on them, everyone on our team gets a little excited. Because it is one of those rare times that you not only get to see a cheetah, but you get up close enough to feel their fur, see their heartbeat and marvel at their amazing physicality. That is, if you’re lucky enough to catch one. Our research team has been undergoing cheetah trapping on and off for the last year in a bid to fit 7 Vectronics Lite tracking collars on cheetahs near the Namibian border to assess transboundary movements, home range utilization and analyse the connectivity between Namibia and Botswana - the two countries that are home to half of the world’s cheetahs. Despite 48 trapping days we have only successfully caught three cheetahs, one of which died of natural causes only three weeks after he was collared. This may not sound like a lot of trapping effort, but you have to consider that these traps are being set in extremely isolated areas and each trap needs to be monitored in person every day early in the morning so that any cheetah caught is not left in the cage for long. This whole process takes up almost every waking hour of our entire research team during trapping events. Because there is no available veterinarian located in the nearby town of Ghanzi, this further limits the times that we are able to collar cheetahs. 
 
When we do catch and collar a cheetah it is reason to celebrate. And we are happy to report that on 12th April our team caught a beautiful male cheetah at Dqae Qare Game Farm just north of Ghanzi town. He was a big boy – weighing in at 60kg and the estimated 4-year-old cat was reported to be in excellent health. With the help of our veterinarian Erik Verreynne, we fitted a GPS satellite collar which will record his location every two hours for over nine months. We were excited to see that he travelled an impressive 15 kilometers (9 miles) in the 10 hours following his release. From the two collars currently in the field, we have seen that they can move great distances in one day but will settle in areas where there is plentiful wild prey species, such as well-stocked game farms. We are hoping that this male will venture over the Namibian border and give us more insight into how cheetahs are negotiating the international border and the protected and non-protected lands that surround it. 

We are thankful to Erik for his vet expertise and to our supporters for making this research possible.