Cheetah Conservation Fund

Category: Cheetah - Education | Date: Jan 16 2008 | By: admin

It has been a busy start of the year! We have had puppies being born, generous donations of equipment come to our clinic and genetics lab, cheetahs being collared and one confiscated just last week. I will be posting some of these news shortly. However, with this post we want to share a letter we received from on of the learners that attended a conservation course at CCF last month:

A letter from one of the participants from our“Integrated Livestock-Predator Management for High School Learners” course, held in December 2007.

I am a student of Highlands Christian School in Windhoek, who attended the Integrated Livestock & Predator Management Training Course 2007, at CCF (Cheetah Conservation Fund). My name is Jamie Theron and this was my time at the CCF:

The week long course was a wonderful experience. Not only did I learn a lot but I also got the chance to interact with different cultures, both locally and internationally. I also discovered what a magnificent animal the cheetah is and how much is being done to save it from extinction. I never really thought of the cheetah as a special or even important animal, but after a week at CCF I completely changed the way I thought about the cheetah.

The course was mainly about cattle and goat farming, the management of these livestock and the conservation of the natural environment and wildlife. I am from the south of Namibia where we farm mostly with sheep and goats, but some of the things that I learned during the course can also be applied to sheep farming. It has also awakened an interest in cattle farming and with my new found knowledge and better understanding of cattle farming it may not be such a bad idea to start moving in that direction.

Before we left we were asked to give suggestions to future courses and I would like to suggest a course about small stock management for sheep farmers and/or a course about establishing and managing a game farm. I want to thank all the people who made it possible and contributed to making the course week so much fun and a special thanks to the ladies who provided the delicious food. I had an exceptionally wonderful, amazing time and look forward to attending future courses at CCF.

Pictured above: Learners meet littleC.

3 responses so far

Category: Cheetah - General | Date: Jan 02 2008 | By: admin

December has been very busy for all of us, as we were focusing on raising funds to meet our budgetary needs for 2007. Now that the year-end rush has ended, a new year has begun, all of us at CCF, staff and cheetahs, want to thank every one at WildlifeDirect.org for giving us an opportunity to spread the word about our work, and very especially to our readers and donors. Your enthusiasm and thought-provoking comments are very important to us. May 2008 bring all of you much health, peace, happiness, and lots of cheetah purrs!

Pictured above, the CCF Namibia staff.

2 responses so far

Category: Cheetah - Education | Date: Jan 02 2008 | By: admin

These are not only the horns of a dead Kudu bull, but could also be a trophy earning the learners’ poverty-stricken parents a good income. To make this a reality, Namibia’s unique resources of wildlife need to be conserved and well managed. As part of our course designed for grade 9 - 12 learners, CCF’s Chris Gordon taught the importance of ecosystem management and exposed them to the idea of conservancies. This has given these learners the first step to become Namibia’s conservancy members in the years to come.

Because Namibian cheetahs live on farmland, conservancies and their wildlife management techniques are extremely important for long-term cheetah conservation. Today, conservancies are a growing movement throughout Namibia, and are playing a leading role in the conservation effort. Free-hold conservancies consist of adjacent farms that are linked through cooperative natural resource management, guided by a management plan. Conservation biologists increasingly emphasize that protected areas alone are simply not large enough to sustain the wildlife they were created to protect. Therefore, it is increasingly clear that a focus on conservation on private and communal farmland is crucial.

Again, it is important to remember that Namibia’s land is not arable for the most part, so game and livestock farms are in many cases the only possible source of income.

One response so far