Visiting cheetah again

After a good breakfast at Frans Indongo lodge we continued to the Cheetah Conservation Fund.

CCF is working broadly to save the wild cheetah and its wilderness habitat. They are working with education and public outreach, with science and research and with conservation biology. Their headquarter is east of Otjiwarongo, in Namibia – the country with the largest number of wild cheetah but the CCF is also active in Kenya, Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Iran and Algeria.

As a tourist visiting the CCF you have a wide variety of activities to choose between. We had been here before and this time we visited the Cheetah museum and we also joined the “Eland Drive”, a drive through two big enclosures with female cheetahs.

The “Eland Drive” is a good way to see cheetahs. They are very hard to see in the wild and even here is is not easy to spot them.

It was almost noon on a very hot day and we found our first cheetah in the shade of a tree.

She was kind enough to take a small walk. The last time we were here the driver brought small pieces of meat to attract the cheetahs but this driver was not as keen.

She looked a bit sad… One of the challenges for the CCF is to persuade farmers to accept cheetahs living on their land. Of the total area in Namibia 40 % is communal lands, primarily used for subsistence agriculture. Another 45 % is private fenced commercial farms. 95 % of the cheetahs in Namibia live on commercial livestock farms.

Here we found a group of four cheetahs. Can you see all four? 

One of them – Blondi – did not like us so she left.

Beautiful animals. 20 % of the world cheetahs live in Namibia and most of them in the central parts between Windhoek and Otjiwarongo.

Back at the center we saw the feeding of the cheetahs living most closely to the office. They are fast…

…and hungry.