Earlier in September 2015, CCB Ghanzi team was called to a farm to rescue 2 cheetah who were about to be shot by a farmer. The mother who was named "Tshaba" and sub-adult cub were taken to CCB's Ghanzi rehabilitation facility and after sourcing a tracking collar, a veterinarian and relocation site, they were translocated to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park on the 18th September 2015. As usual, we had trouble finding a safe site to relocate these beautiful animals, we were looking for a location with permanent water, gamepotential prey, few lions competitors, and few people with whom they would come into conflict with. Unfortunately, such a place does not exist is hard to find in Botswana, especially during low rainfall years. We weighed up all our options and decided to release them in the settled on the best possible location. However, even with the best care and the best release site; very few translocated animals will survive being relocated to a new habitat translocation is still a huge challenge for the animal. CCB only does translocation as a last resort, we do everything possible to convince farmers not to take the removal approach but rather improve management. Unfortunately in a few cases this is not successful and the farmer insists the cheetah is taken away. It's situations like these that make us aware how important our work to mitigate human-wildlife conflict is - unless we can help people to live peacefully alongside cheetahs, there will be no places left for these beautiful animals to live. Thank you to all who helped in the process and we have our fingers and toes crossed that these two cheetahs can find a safe place to call their new home.
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