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Ecology

Learn about the habitats and ecosystems that cheetahs live in, and their relationships with other species in the ecosystem.

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Ecology

Ecological studies and researches are the first step in understanding the movement, diet, and behavioral patterns of any species of wildlife, as well as the biodiversity and well-being of the entire ecosystem. In Namibia, because 90% of the cheetah population lives on farmlands alongside 80% of the country’s wildlife species, it is crucial to invest in ecological research and conservation efforts in order to ensure that wildlife, livestock, and farmers can all coexist together. Education and outreach efforts are also equally important in educating people to make more sustainable utilizations of the land and its resources, and preserve the richness in biodiversity and land fertility for future generations.

Ecology

Ecosystem and Habitat

Understanding the relationships and interactions of elements in the ecosystem and habitat where cheetahs live is crucial for any conservation and management efforts. Understanding of subjects in this area can help answer questions such as “what animals do cheetahs prey on and eat” and “what are its roles in its habitat and relationships with other species of animals”.

Where Cheetahs Live

Cheetah Habitat

African savannas have rich fauna biodiversity and house the habitats of a wide range of wildlife.

African savannas have rich fauna biodiversity and house the habitats of a wide range of wildlife.

Animals, includes cheetah, are adapted to live in specific habitats. Cheetahs live mainly in grassland savanna. They prefer habitat which includes some cover in the form of bushes, medium length grass, trees, and small hills. Cheetahs need abundant prey in their habitat to survive and reproduce. In Namibia their habitat is densely bushed due to bush encroachment.

Cheetahs sometimes live in a wide variety of habitats. They occasionally use semi-desert, dense woodland or mountainous terrain. Older animals unable to defend territories and young cheetahs just starting to live on their own use these marginal habitats.

What is a habitatAfrican savanna

Namibian Biomes

Namibia is a country with rich biodiversity, as its land spans over five distinct types of biomes.

Click to learn more about the biomes of Namibia.
Map of Namibian biomes and cheetah ranges in Namibia. Cheetahs prefer the savanna biome which supports the animals they prey on.

Map of Namibian biomes and cheetah ranges in Namibia. Cheetahs prefer the savanna biome which supports the animals they prey on.

What is biome?

The Cheetah’s Prey

Cheetahs prefer game to livestock

Cheetahs are born to prey on wild game, and will instinctually go after them. Cheetahs only go after livestock as a last resort when wild game is not available. This makes maintaining healthy ecosystems very important.

Cheetahs hunt mostly small antelope, young of large antelope, warthog, hare and game birds. They may take livestock in exceptional or opportunistic cases.

Cheetahs prefer game to livestock.

The cheetah’s lightweight build limits the size of prey they catch. Male coalitions can, however, overcome larger prey. Coalitions also stand a better chance at defending their prey against competitors than single cheetahs.

Predators have to work very hard to catch their prey. Cheetahs need to carefully select the animal they are most likely to catch. For this reason cheetahs, like all other predators, target animals that are old, sick, very young, injured, or slow. This allows only the strongest to survive and pass on their genes, thus maintaining a healthier game population.

Cheetah and lion have drastically different preys, hunting strategies, and success rates.
Cheetahs in a coalition need to work together as a team to bring down larger and stronger prey, such as this wildebeest.

Cheetahs in a coalition need to work together as a team to bring down larger and stronger prey, such as this wildebeest.

One of cheetahs' favorite type of prey are the gazelles, although they are very vigilant, fast and agile, thus are hard to catch.

One of cheetahs' favorite type of prey are the gazelles, although they are very vigilant, fast and agile, thus are hard to catch.

Cheetah’s Role in the Ecosystem

Cheetah’s role

A simplified illustration of the food web of a savanna ecosystem.

A simplified illustration of the food web of a savanna ecosystem.

Every animal species has its role (or niche) in the ecosystem that it lives in. As a carnivorous predator, the cheetah’s role in the ecosystem is important as it helps to maintain balanced and healthy food webs.

One of the cheetah’s roles in the ecosystem is to help keep the population of grazing animals at a healthy state. Because of the fact that cheetahs do not have the strength to go after big games such as adult wildebeest, elands, and kudus, they go after the ones that are young, weak, or sick. This helps to ensure that only the strongest of those species will survive, and also the populations of those species won’t reach the limit the ecosystem could handle such that it will have negative consequences.

Relationships with other species

Perhaps the cheetahs’ closest interactions with other species of animals other than the ones preyed upon are their competitors. While there are no species of animals that solely prey on the cheetahs as a food source, many compete with the cheetahs for food, territory, and dominance. Lions, leopards, and hyenas are the most formidable competitors that would come into the way of the cheetahs.

Despite the fact that competitions inevitably lead to casualties, it is an important aspect of any healthy ecosystem. Competitions ensure that no species of animal absolutely dominates all the resources in a territory, and resources are partitioned accordingly among the competing species as much as possible to minimize conflict. This leads to a balanced ecosystem with the most biodiversity, as each species is unique in its role within the ecosystem.

Hyenas often try to either steal cheetahs' killed preys or scavenge on the remains.

Hyenas often try to either steal cheetahs' killed preys or scavenge on the remains.

Lions will often take over the cheetah's prey easily as they are superior in strength.

Lions will often take over the cheetah's prey easily as they are superior in strength.

Eco-management

Effective management of land, livestock, and wildlife are essential ingredients that lead to sustainable utilizations of resources, more sustainable human developments, as well as better conservation of wildlife and the entire ecosystem. Effective farming practices can yield maximal profits and minimal degradations to the land and nature. Conservancies empower farmers with more well-managed ownership of lands, and can generate income through other revenues such as eco-tourism.

Hunting and Predator Control

Traditional Hunting versus Poaching?

Subsistence hunting for food is carried out throughout the world where families live off the land. Traditional methods of traps and snares are still popular but more and more people are turning toward guns.

Conservation Through Sustainable Utilization

Sustainability refers to a process that can last forever. Utilizing a resource sustainably means that using the natural resource will not destroy it. Hunting can be a form of sustainable use. A sustainable outlook on hunting also sets aside a portion of the revenue collected from the hunt to support conservation efforts for the species.

What is sustainable utilization?

Hunting

Hunting has changed through the ages from a necessity for survival, to a sport and a management activity. Ethical hunters and trophy hunting operations operate with the best intentions for conservation and the continued existence of the population being hunted.

In Namibia, there are a number of laws that regulate hunting. Permits are required to hunt wildlife that has been divided up into numerous categories, namely, hunt-able game. With each of these categories there are differing requirements for permits.

Population Control

Game farmers have to manage their herds throughout the year and on occasion they cull animals to reduce their numbers, through shooting or live sale. When animals are shot, the meat is sold for food. Game capture units transport and sell live game. Permits are required for these operations.

Predator Control

Predator control is an issue around the globe.

Proven farm and livestock management techniques can be employed to deter predations from problem animals. One great example is CCF’s Livestock Guarding Dog program.

Predator control is an issue around the globe.

An animal usually resorts to killing livestock due to a medical problem, human influence or a natural incident which renders it unable to catch its wild prey. Only a cheetah that consistently hunts livestock should be considered a problem animal. It is critical to identify the individual culprit causing losses rather than remove all cheetahs indiscriminately. The opportunistic killing of inadequately protected livestock, such a new born calves in the bush, indicates poor livestock management which does not warrant the removal of the predator. Some farmers trap, poison and shoot cheetahs. This may not be due to livestock losses, but simply because the predator entered the farm and is perceived as a threat to livestock or family.

Predator control most commonly involves setting live capture cage traps. Farmers also use gin traps and poisoned carcasses. These methods only increase problems as they tend to lure and kill indiscriminately. Animals suffering as a result include ones which benefit the farmland ecosystem, as such pangolin, aardwolf, honey badger and bat eared fox.

What is a problem animal?

The Farming Community

New methods of livestock and wildlife management are incorporated into agricultural practices to ensure a healthy ecosystem.

Mixed Farming - Wildlife and Livestock

Combining game and livestock farming holds many advantages for the farmer. A variety of game species helps to maintain a healthy farmland ecosystem by using all levels and forms of vegetation. When livestock prices are low, game animals can supplement the farmer’s income in the form of hunting, ecotourism or direct live sale. Game animals tolerate drought conditions better than livestock. They also act as a buffer reducing the occurrences of predation on livestock.

Conservancies

Cheetah Conservation Fund works with communal farmers and people living around the Greater Waterberg Landscape Conservancy.

Cheetah Conservation Fund works with communal farmers and people living around the Greater Waterberg Landscape Conservancy. (Image credit: Cheetah Conservation Fund)

Conservancies are legally protected areas with shared common resources where conservation is actively practiced. Its purpose is to achieve a collective policy for the ownership, management and use of resources. Conservation is the management of human use of organisms or ecosystems to ensure that such use is sustainable. Conservancy objectives include the protection, maintenance, rehabilitation, restoration, and enhancement of ecosystems.

Conservancies retain all income from wildlife and tourism based enterprises within the conservancy and decides on how these fund are spent. Commercial conservancies consist of adjacent private farms joining together in common units. Communal conservancies operate on a local level and membership is made up entirely of community members who decide to work together for the sustainable management and use of wildlife and tourism.

Eco-tourism

Namibia has a reputation as the “Cheetah Capital of the World” and tourists come to see cheetah habitat and learn how cheetahs survive on farmland. Ecotourism focuses in animals, habitats, and places of conservation interest. Etosha National Park, the Namibia Desert and the Skeleton Coast are major attractions for foreign ecotourists. Lodges, guest farms, and commercial villages are points on Namibian ecotours. Many of these destinations promote cheetah conservation.

Sometime in the 2000s, the annual number of tourists visiting Namibia exceeded 500,000. Tourists spend money on transport, lodging, food and souvenirs. This is an important part of the economy and a supplement to agricultural income for many Namibians.

Cheetah Friendly Farming

Namibian farmers practice diverse farming activities that form part of the ecosystem. It is farmers, hunters, and game managers who will preserve Namibia’s precious ecosystem for future generations to enjoy.

There is no single solution to predator conflicts. Effective predator control and overall farm management requires a variety of integrated management strategies.

Smallstock practices

Kraals

Kraaling smallstock at night enables monitoring and protection. Sturdy fencing or thorn branches must be tall enough to keep stock in and predators out.

Herder

Keeping a herder with smallstock during the day provides additional protection.

Shared practices

sheepcattle
Herd Management

Predators such as cheetahs are opportunistic. Management strategies should aim to protect livestock when they are most vulnerable, particularly at night and during birthing seasons. Culling animals that fail to produce or consistently lose calves to predation increases herd production.

Seasonal births

Seasonal birthing allows intensive monitoring of the calving/lambing herds.

Synchronizing livestock births with wildlife calving seasons ensures sufficient natural prey when livestock are most vulnerable.

Fencing

Wildlife-friendly farmers use four to five strands of non-barbed galvanized wires for interior livestock fencing. These low fences are not high and leave a large gap along the bottom to allow migration of wildlife through farmlands.

Guard animals

Losses are reduced by utilizing livestock guardians such as dogs for smallstock and donkeys for cattle. Guard animals need to be healthy and properly trained in order to be effective.

Cattle practices

Calving camps

Close monitoring is made possible by locating calving camps near the homestead. This reduces losses to predation, accidents or other complications in the first few weeks of a calf’s life. Larger herd size also discourages predators.

Calves under three months of age and heifers (first-time mothers) are most vulnerable to predators. Closer monitoring will reduce losses.

Breeds

Choose breeds that are more aggressive and allowing horns to grow on cows reduces losses to predators.

Bush Encroachment and Solutions

Bush Encroachment

Thickened thorn bush degrades entire habitat and poses problems for all species of animals in that habitat.

Thickened thorn bush degrades entire habitat and poses problems for all species of animals in that habitat. (Image credit: Cheetah Conservation Fund)

One of the most serious environmental threats facing Namibia is bush encroachment. Approximately 14 million hectares of land (12% of Namibia) is now so badly encroached that neither man nor livestock can penetrate it.

Under natural conditions, the savannas are covered with grasslands, scattered trees and shrubs, supporting a wide variety of wildlife. Herbivores usually feed intensely in localized areas for short periods of time. Plants and trees experience brief and intense browsing and grazing pressure separated by extended rest periods. This, combined with regular fires, maintains a balance between trees and grasses. Larger animals like elephant and rhino aid in controlling the growth of bush.

How does Stock Farming Contribute to Bush Encroachment

Domestic livestock are primarily grazers. Farm fences prevent livestock from moving freely. If not properly managed, this results in overgrazing. This occurs when animals continue to graze and trampling the land on which they are kept, thus allowing little time for grass species to grow and seed. This leads to the gradual decline of grass species and allows the bush to grow out of control. The prevention of fires adds to bush encroachment.

Cheetah Survival in Bush Encroached Areas

Bush encroachment reduces carrying capacity for both livestock and game species. As bush encroachment increases, cheetahs must adopt their hunting techniques. Ambush tactics may replace the characteristic high-speed chase. Scientists are investigating a possible link between the increased occurrences of cheetah eye injuries and their hunting in bush encroached areas.

Bush Encroachment Threatens Cheetah Survival

Cheetahs face even more hardship in bush encroached territories. They have to adapt in every aspect of their life, such as hunting.

Cheetahs face even more hardship in bush encroached territories. They have to adapt in every aspect of their life, such as hunting.

Cheetahs hunt in open or semi-open savanna using bursts of speed. But Namibia’s livestock farmlands, where 90% of the cheetahs live, are less desirable for the cheetahs and the farmers due to bush encroachment. Bush encroachment, a form of desertification, is caused from overgrazing of livestock on the arid lands and unpredictable and regular droughts.

The deep rooted thorn bushes reduce the water table and compete with the grasses and become a thicket, taking the underground water and causing desertification. Bush encroachment causes changes in habitats and the mix of prey species on the land.

The cheetah’s rangeland has been infested with undesirable thickened thorn bush species. Bush encroachment reduces the amount of grasslands and poses a major livelihood threat to Namibians, as well as to the cheetah and other wildlife species.

Cheetah Conservation Fund’s (CCF) Bush Project

FSC logo

CCF Bush (PTY) LTD, began in 2000, with the support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to study and develop an ecologically and economically viable habitat restoration program. The goal of CCF Bush is to stimulate the development of a Namibian Biomass industry, thereby protecting the bush ecosystem, restoring wildlife habitat, improving farming productivity, creating employment opportunities and providing clean, renewable energy.

CCF harvests the thickened thorn bush, converting it into a clean-burning, biomass fuel log known as Bushblok ™. CCF has restored hundreds of hectares of savanna grasslands for livestock, wildlife and cheetahs to share. In 2006, CCF obtained Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, confirming that it manages forest resources responsibly and sustainably.

The Bushblok project objectives are:

CCF Bushblok
  • To enhance the long-term survival of the cheetah and other species by restoring the grasslands.
  • To provide an alternative to over-exploiting native Namibian trees for firewood and charcoal.
  • To encourage industries to use intruder bush as a raw material.
  • To provide standards for bush harvesting, chipping, processing and packaging.
  • To employ, train and empower disadvantaged Namibians.
  • To supply Namibians and international markets with compacted fuel log products.
Bushblok is produced at CCF from the waste product of habitat restoration.

Bushblok is produced at CCF from the waste product of habitat restoration. (Image credit: Cheetah Conservation Fund)

Bushblok packaging for different markets.

Bushblok packaging for different markets. (Image credit: Cheetah Conservation Fund)

Research

Environmental and biological researches provide powerful insights to conservationists in understanding the elements in an ecosystem, as well as answers to questions on how a particular species behave within that system. CCF’s researches provide crucial understanding in cheetah movement, diet, and behavioral patterns in various part of Namibia. These researches help CCF and other conservationists draw crucial decisions on conservation efforts and sustainable developments that benefit both Namibians, livestocks, wildlife, and the land.

Understanding Animal Movement

To understand how cheetahs use their habitat you must be able to identify individual animals and record their position periodically. Individual photos or distinctive collars would be useful if cheetahs were frequently sighted, but they are not. Trackers may note the spoor (tracks) of a particular cheetah at various places and estimates when they were made. This is difficult due to the large ranges they cover and the fact that individuals are hard to identify.

The preferred method to study cheetah movement is to radio-track individuals. A lightweight collar carrying a battery pack and a small transmitter is fitted around the cheetah’s neck. The scientist uses a receiver and a special directional antenna (either in the ground or from a plane) to pick up the cheetah’s signal. The receiver transmits the signal into beeps. Each collar’s transmitter has a different radio frequency so that many cheetahs can be located during one “radio-tracking session”.

Estimating population size is crucial in species conservation.

Conducting a repeatable and consistent census methodology for cheetahs has been a part of the Cheetah Conservation Fund’s (CCF’s) on-going research.

CCF’s researchers use spoor tracking, radio telemetry and camera trapping. These techniques are tested and compared to determine whether one technique produces better census result.

Radio Telemetry

CCF tracked cheetahs by airplane, as well as on the ground one to two times per week between 1992 and 2002. Today CCF uses satellite collars for tracking cheetahs.

Radio telemetry analysis was utilized as a comparative method to assess the precision of spoor tracking results.

Spoor Tracking

Spoor tracking data is collected monthly by driving specific routes.

Spoor frequency is calculated by dividing the total distance between the numbers of samples of fresh spoor.

Spoor density is calculated by dividing the number of fresh spoor between the total distances. Spoor tracking proved promising as a census technique as it displayed a positive relationship with the densities reported in the radio telemetry study.

Camera Trapping

Three study areas, each at 200 square kilometers are divided into grids. These areas combined are equal to the size of a cheetah’s home range area.

A camera trap location is allocated to the study areas; this takes periods of ground trothing in order to identify play trees and suitable farm roads where cameras can be placed.

Two heat sensor monitor cameras are used at each camera trap site in order for both sides of a cheetah to be captured - this allows for more accurate identification.

Using camera traps, CCF researchers are able to determine the amount of male and female cheetahs by individually identifying each of the cheetahs captured on camera. Analysis allows for an estimate of the population size within the study area.

After collecting and processing photos on computers, identification can begin.

Cheetah movement study with camera traps in the Greater Waterberg Conservancy. (Image credit: Cheetah Conservation Fund)

Cheetah movement study with camera traps in the Greater Waterberg Conservancy. (Image credit: Cheetah Conservation Fund)