In November one of the commercial farmers we have been working with for a decade was having problems with cheetahs eating his livestock and the stocked antelope on his game farm. We provided suggestions of different techniques he could use to minimise the vulnerability of his stock and offered to collar cheetahs on his farm, so that he could adapt the management and movement of his animals to avoid areas where the cheetahs frequented. Despite adopting a livestock guarding dog from our LGD programme, and using some of the techniques we suggested, he became disgruntled with the cheetahs. Despite our best efforts to convince him that catching and relocating cheetahs off the farm would be risky (especially considering his farm seemed to be a hot spot for cheetahs, with many different individuals using his farm), he set traps to catch cheetahs for translocation. The success rates of cheetah translocations are notoriously low – our research identified that less than 20% of cheetahs were still alive one year after they were moved, and farmers continue to have conflict even after cheetahs are translocated off their farms. For this reason, CCB no longer conducts translocations unless every other possible non-lethal technique has been tried first. Knowing this, the farmer phoned the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) to take the cheetah off his farm. Limited by strained resources and broken vehicles, the DWNP team called us for assistance and we rushed to the farm to help them to move the cheetah into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve for release. 
 
We are happy to report that the farmer has been experiencing no losses since he removed this cheetah. He even adopted one particularly interesting technique suggested by our team, of spreading lion faeces around certain areas of his farm, to try to deter the cheetahs from where his animals are. Cheetahs are naturally afraid of lions, and although he was hesitant when our team arrived with a bag full of lion poop and explained the process, his faith in us led him to give it a try, and so far, it seems to be helping. We look forward to analysing the trends of cheetah movements on the cameras we have placed at the farm to see how this intervention may have altered the behaviour of the cheetahs on his farm. We will also keep a close eye on the number of losses he experiences in the long term, to assess how long his problems remain at bay. For now, we are very glad that he was able to mitigate his problems using a non-lethal solution and we hope that his other techniques are able to minimise his losses in the future. At times we have to be flexible in our approach in order to maintain dialogue with farmers and appreciate both sides of the challenge of human wildlife conflict.

​This incident has shone light on how important it is to maintain good working relationships with farmers in core cheetah areas, something that we at CCB take great pride in. We know that farming alongside carnivores can be incredibly challenging, but we implore farmers to try non-lethal solutions first in order to find sustainable, long-term protection of their livestock. 

CCB receives financial support from a huge variety of wonderful organisations, businesses and individuals from all over the world. We are so incredibly grateful and humbled by the support we receive and we work very hard to make sure this money is put to its best possible use protecting cheetahs, the beautiful Kalahari and helping the people who live alongside wildlife. 
 
Every now and then though, we are completely blown away by the efforts people make to help us to carry out our mandate of protecting the Kalahari’s cheetahs. This is Gio – he is 9 years old. Gio raised an amazing €1421 for CCB by cycling 15 kilometers around his local safari park — Safaripark Beekse Bergen — where he enlisted the help of zoo staff and local celebrities to ride with him to help him raise funds to help protect cheetahs in the wild. Even the cheetahs at the Safari Park ran alongside him in their enclosure in a show of support! The money Gio raised will pay for a satellite tracking collar which will be placed on a cheetah early in 2021 to help mitigate human-wildlife conflict. We will send the GPS points of the cheetah to farmers in the area so that they can adapt their livestock management to minimise conflict and to promote coexistence between farmers and cheetahs. We will also send the GPS points to Gio and his family so they can keep track of their very special cheetah. 
 
Thank you Gio and to everyone who supported his fundraising efforts! Gio — you are such an inspiration for everyone across the world who wants to do their part for conservation but is not sure where to start. One person can really make a difference and you have certainly shown that. Thank you!!

We are proud to announce that CCB has been recognised as a finalist for the Equator Prize 2020. The Equator Prize, organised by the Equator Initiative within the United Nations Development Programme, is awarded biennially to recognize outstanding community efforts to reduce poverty through biodiversity conservation and the sustainable use of natural resource. 
 
For the work we do to be recognized on a global level is an honour. We hope this will continue to motivate our staff and collaborators within communities in the Ghanzi district, our networks of farmers, affiliated schools, and the departments in the government of Botswana we work with to achieve a world where coexistence is a reality.

COVID-19 restrictions pose significant challenges to field research work like that being carried out by CCB’s Marie-Charlotte Gielen. We caught up with her to get some insight on how national precautions have impacted the work she is doing as part of her PhD research. 

Marie’s spoor surveys are conducted twice a year over four Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) of the Ghanzi District, in between the dry and wet seasons. During these periods, the animals tend to move more, some of them switching home ranges between seasons. This is therefore a good opportunity to count their spoor (footprints) and get better insights regarding their movements and their relationships to other landscape features such as cattleposts, vegetation and waterpoints.  
This year, the spoor survey was planned for mid-May until mid-June. When the lockdown was announced end of March, Marie had some worries that she wouldn’t be able to start her surveys on time and that she would miss some of the wildlife movements. Thankfully, Marie was granted movement permits and was able to start her spoor surveys in early June, only a few week after her original scheduled start date. There was just one problem — “As I looked at the spoor data I collected, the total count was only a quarter of the May 2019 survey. “ she tells us.  

The number of large carnivores’ spoor that was counted was no different from the survey conducted last year, but the number of large herbivore tracks counted was much lower. Marie believes that there could be several reasons for this. It is possible that because the survey was delayed, a large number of herbivores might have already moved and therefore were not counted. It is also possible that the herbivore populations underwent a severe decline in the populations due to the drought in the area last year. The data seems to indicate that the abundance of cattle in the area may also have deterred the herbivores from the study sites. “I observed cattle tracks on nearly all my transects this season, which I hadn’t observed during the surveys last year.” Marie said. Marie has hypothesised  that the good rains that fell late last year resulted in an abundant production of wild melons across the area. When abundant, wild Tsamma melons can serve as an alternative water source for wildlife and livestock alike.  This supply of melons may explain why Marie found non-herded cattle wandering upwards of 50km from the nearest cattle post. These cattle had no only strayed from agricultural areas and into the WMA “buffer zones” but it had taken them right up to the southern, unfenced portion of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. 

Marie’s data also seems to indicate that most large herbivores tended to avoid all areas where cattle were abundant. It’s possible that wild herbivores do this to avoid the ticks and flies that livestock bring along, as well as avoiding the competition for grazing. These data have important ramifications for the management of livestock in these wildlife management areas as presence of livestock can compromise their role as wildlife corridors. Marie suggests that the adverse effects of livestock in the WMAs could be mitigated efficiently by a time-sensitive implementation of cattle herding to avoid encroachment of the cattle into the wildlife areas and also to reduce human-wildlife conflict at the same time. 

The consistency and replication of these spoor surveys over seasons are essential to draw out some reliable conclusions on wildlife movements and their interactions with their environment. Marie hopes that the COVID situation will stabilise so that her November survey can be conducted on schedule.